ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

regard for Pembroke College, which he retained to the last. A short time before his death he sent to that college a present of all his works, to be deposited in their library: and he had thoughts of leaving to it his house at Lichfield; but his friends who were about him very properly dissuaded him from it, and he bequeathed it to some poor relations. He took a pleasure in boasting of the many eminent men who had been educated at Pembroke. In this list are found the names of Mr. Hawkins the Poetry Professor, Mr. Shenstone, Sir William Blackstone, and others 2; not forgetting the celebrated popular preacher, Mr. George Whitefield, of whom, though Dr. Johnson did not think very highly, it must be acknowleged that his eloquence was powerful, his views pious and charitable, his assiduity almost incredible; and that, since his death, the integrity of his character has been fully vindicated. Being himself a poet, Johnson was peculiarly happy in mentioning how many of the sons of Pembroke were poets; adding, with a smile of sportive triumph, "Sir, we are a nest of singing-birds."

must we feel when we read such an anecdote of Samuel Johnson!

His spirited refusal of an eleemosynary supply of shoes arose, no doubt, from a proper pride. But, considering his ascetic disposition at times, as acknowledged by himself in his Meditations, and the exaggeration with which some have treated the peculiarities of his character, I should not wonder to hear it ascribed to a principle of superstitious mortification; as we are told by Tursellinus, in his Life of St. Ignatius Loyola, that this intrepid founder of the order of Jesuits, when he arrived at Goa, after having made a severe pilgrimage through the eastern deserts, persisted in wearing his miserable shattered shoes, and when new ones were offered him, rejected them as an unsuitable indulgence.

The res angusta domi prevented him from having the advantage of a complete academical education. The friend to whom he had trusted for support had deceived him. His debts in college, though not great, were increasing; and his scanty remittances from Lichfield, which had all along been made with great difficulty, could be supplied no longer, his father having fallen into a state of insolvency. Compelled, therefore, by irresistible necessity, he left the college in autumn 1731, without a degree, having been a member of it little more than three years.5

Dr. Adams, the worthy and respectable master of Pembroke College, has generally had the reputation of being Johnson's tutor. The fact, however, is, that in 1731, Mr. Jorden quitted the college, and his pupils were transferred to Dr. Adams; so that had Johnson returned, Dr. Adams would have been his tutor. It is to be wished, that this connection had taken place. His equal temper, mild disposition, and politeness of manners, might have insensibly softened the harshness of Johnson, and infused into him those more delicate cha

He was not, however, blind to what he thought the defects of his own college: and I have, from the information of Dr. Taylor, a very strong instance of that rigid honesty which he ever inflexibly preserved. Taylor had obtained his father's consent to be entered of Pembroke, that he might be with his schoolfellow Johnson, with whom, though some years older than himself, he was very intimate. This would have been a great comfort to Johnson. But he fairly told Taylor that he could not, in conscience, suffer him to enter where he knew he could not have an able tutor. He then made enquiry all round the university, and having found that Mr. Bateman, of Christchurch, was the tutor of highest reputation, Taylor was entered of that college. Mr. Bateman's lectures were so excellent, that Johnson used to come and get them at second-rities, those petites morales, in which, it must be hand from Taylor, till his poverty being so extreme, that his shoes were worn out, and his feet appeared through them, he saw that this humiliating circumstance was perceived by the Christ-church men, and he came no more. He was too proud to accept of money, and somebody having set a pair of new shoes at his door, he threw them away with indignation. 3 How

1 Dr. Hall says, "Certainly, not all; and those which we have are not all marked as presented by him."— CROKER.

2 To the list should be added, Francis Beaumont, the dramatic writer; Sir Thomas Browne, whose life Johnson wrote; Sir James Dyer, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, Lord Chancellor Harcourt, John Pym, Francis Rous, the Speaker of Cromwell's parliament, and Bishop Bonner. - WRIGHT.

3 Authoritatively and circumstantially as this story is told, it seems impossible to reconcile it with some indisputable facts and dates. Taylor was admitted commoner of Christchurch, 27 June 1730: but Johnson had left Oxford six months before. The only solution that I can imagine for these discrepancies, is the improbable one of Johnson's having accompanied Taylor to Oxford without reappearing at his own college.CROKER.

confessed, our great moralist was more deficient than his best friends could fully justify. Dr. Adams paid Johnson this high compliment. He said to me at Oxford, in 1776, "I was his nominal tutor6; but he was above my mark." When I repeated it to Johnson, his eyes flashed with grateful satisfaction, and he exclaimed, "That was liberal and noble."

4 See antè, p. 12. note 3.- CROKER.

5 Error: he was but fourteen months at Oxford. (Antè, p. 13. n. 1.) Here, then, are two important years, the 21st and 22d of his age, to be accounted for; and Mr. Boswell's assertion (a little farther on)," that he could not have been assistant to Anthony Blackwall, because Blackwall died in 1730, before Johnson had left college," falls to the ground. He might have been for two or three months with Blackwall, who died in April, 1730.- CROKER.

6 There is an obvious discrepancy between Boswell's and Dr. Adams's statements, arising, no doubt, from the general error as to the date of Johnson's leaving college. Dr. Adams never was, in any sense, Johnson's tutor. CROKER.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

AND now (I had almost said poor) Samuel Johnson returned to his native city, destitute, and not knowing how he should gain even a decent livelihood. His father's misfortunes in trade rendered him unable to support his son1; and for some time there appeared no means by which he could maintain himself. In the December of this year his father died.

The state of poverty in which he died appears from a note in one of Johnson's little diaries of the following year, which strongly displays his spirit and virtuous dignity of mind.

“1732, Julii 15. Undecim aureos deposui, quo die quicquid ante matris funus (quod serum sit precor) de paternis bonis sperari licet, viginti scilicet libras, accepi. Usque adeo mihi fortuna fingenda est. Interea, ne paupertate vires animi languescant, nec in flagitia egestas abigat, cavendum. I layed by eleven guineas on this day, when I received twenty pounds, being all that I have reason to hope for out of my father's effects, previous to the death of my mother; an event which I pray God may be very remote. I now therefore see that I must make my own fortune. Meanwhile, let me take care that the powers of my mind be not debilitated by poverty, and that indigence do not force me into any criminal act."

Johnson was so far fortunate, that the respectable character of his parents, and his own merit, had, from his earliest years, secured him a kind reception in the best families at Lichfield. Among these I can mention Mr. Howard 2, Dr. Swinfen, Mr. Simpson, Mr. Levett 3, Captain Garrick, father of the great ornament of the British stage; but above all, Mr. Gilbert Walmesley, Registrar of the Ecclesiastical

1 Johnson's father," says Hawkins," either during his continuance at the university, or possibly before, had been by misfortunes rendered insolvent, if not, as Johnson told me, an actual bankrupt." Amongst the MSS. of Pembroke College are some letters which state that his widow was left in great poverty. CHOKER.

1 Mr. Howard was a proctor in the Ecclesiastical Court, and resided in the Close.CROKER.

Mr. Levett was a gentleman of fortune in this neighbourhood, and must not be confounded with the humble friend of the same name to whom Johnson was so charitable in after life. - CROKER.

Mr. Warton informs me, that this early friend of Johnson was entered a Commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, aged 17, in 1608; and is the author of many Latin verse translations in the Gentleman's Magazine. One of them [vol. xv. p. 102.] is a translation of “ My time, O ye Muses, was happily spent,"

Court of Lichfield, whose character, long after his decease, Dr. Johnson has, in his life of Edmund Smith [1779], thus drawn in the glowing colours of gratitude:

"Of Gilbert Walmesley, thus presented to my mind, let me indulge myself in the remembrance. I knew him very early; he was one of the first friends that literature procured me, and I hope, that at least my gratitude made me worthy of his notice.

"He was of an advanced age, and I was only not a boy, yet he never received my notions with contempt. He was a Whig, with all the virulence and malevolence of his party; yet difference of opinion did not keep us apart. I honoured him, and he endured me.

"He had mingled with the gay world without exemption from its vices or its follies; but had never neglected the cultivation of his mind. His belief of revelation was unshaken; his learning preserved his principles; he grew first regular, and then pious.

"His studies had been so various, that I am not

able to name a man of equal knowledge. His acquaintance with books was great, and what he did not immediately know, he could, at least, tell where to find. Such was his amplitude of learning, and such his copiousness of communication, that it may be doubted whether a day now passes, in which I have not some advantage from his friendship.

"At this man's table I enjoyed many cheerful and instructive hours, with companions such as are not often found with one who has lengthened, and one who has gladdened life; with Dr. James, and with David Garrick, whom I hoped to have whose skill in physic will be long remembered; gratified with this character of our common friend. But what are the hopes of man? I am disappointed by that stroke of death which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure."

In these families he passed much time in his early years. In most of them, he was in the company of ladies, particularly at Mr. Walmesley's, whose wife and sisters-in-law, of the name of Aston, and daughters of a baronet, were remarkable for good breeding; so that the notion which has been industriously circulated and believed, that he never was in good company till late in life, and, consequently, had been confirmed in coarse and ferocious manners by long habits, is wholly without foundation. Some of the ladies have assured me,

&c. He died August 3. 1751, and a monument to his memory has been erected in the cathedral of Lichfield, with an inscription written by Mr. Seward, one of the prebeudaries.BOSWELL. He was the son of W. Walmesley, (so they spelled their name,) LL.D., chancellor of the diocese, and in 1701 M.P. for the city of Lichfield, and was born in 1680; but I think Dr. Warton was mistaken in attributing the transla tion of the song to him, for, though signed "G. Walmsley," it is dated Sid. Col. Cambridge. Johnson's friend was at that date (1745) 65 years of age. — Croker.

5 His original acquaintance with these ladies must have been short and slight, for Mr. Walmesley's marriage with Miss Aston, the link of the intercourse, did not take place till April 1736, (when Mr. Walmsley was 56), about which time Johnson had removed to Edial, as he did in the following year to London. - CROKER.

[blocks in formation]

"As the particulars of the former part of Dr. Johnson's life do not seem to be very accurately known, a lady hopes that the following information may not be unacceptable. She remembers Dr. Johnson on a visit to Dr. Taylor, at Ashbourn, some time between the end of the year 37, and the middle of the year 40; she rather thinks it to have been after he and his wife were removed to London.

During his stay at Ashbourn, he made frequent visits to Mr. Meynell, at Bradley, where his company was much desired by the ladies of the family,

[blocks in formation]

"Lichfield, Oct. 30. 1731.

"Sir, I have so long neglected to return you thanks for the favour and assistance received from you at Stourbridge, that I am afraid you have now done expecting it. I can, indeed, make no apology, but by assuring you, that this delay, whatever was the cause of it, proceeded neither from forgetfulness, disrespect, nor ingratitude. Time has not made the sense of obligation less while I am acknowledging one favour, I must beg warm, nor the thanks I return less sincere. that you would excuse the composition

another

But

of the verses you desired. Be pleased to consider, that versifying against one's inclination is the must disagreeable thing in the world; and that one's own disappointment is no inviting subject; and that though the gratifying of you might have prereflection, so barren, that to attempt to write upon vailed over my dislike of it, yet it proves, upon it, is to undertake to build without materials.

64

As

who were, perhaps, in point of elegance and accomplishments, inferior to few of those with whom he was afterwards acquainted. Mr. Meynell's eldest daughter was afterwards married to Mr. Fitzherbert, father to Mr. Alleyne Fitzherbert, lately minister to the court of Russia [and since Lord St. Helens]. Of her, Dr. Johnson said in Dr. Lawrence's study, that she had the best understanding he ever met with in any human being. At Mr. Meynell's heI am yet unemployed, I hope you will, if any thing should offer, remember and recommend, also commenced that friendship with Mrs. Hill Sir, your humble servant, Boothby, sister to the present Sir Brook Boothby, "SAM. JOHNSON."] which continued till her death. The young woman whom he used to call Molly Aston, was sister to Sir Thomas Aston', and daughter to a baronet; she was also sister to the wife of his friend, Mr. Gilbert Walmesley. Besides his intimacy with the abovementioned persons, who were surely people of rank and education, while he was yet at Lichfield he used to be frequently at the house of Dr. Swinfen, a gentleman of very ancient family in Staffordshire, from which, after the death of his elder brother, he inherited a good estate. He was, besides, a physician of very extensive practice; but for want of due attention to the management of his domestic con

1 The anonymous lady's information is of no great value, even if true, but there is strong reason to doubt its accuracy. It is full of chronological difficulties, and can be at best but the vague recollections of 50 years before, as the quotation from Hawkins ascertains it to have been given subsequent to 1787.-CROKER.

2 Miss Boothby was born in 1708, and died in 1756. For the last three years of her life this lady maintained a pious and somewhat mystical correspondence with Dr. Johnson, which was published in 1805, by Mr. Wright of Lichfield, in the same little volume, with the ante-biographical "Account of Dr. Johnson's Early Life, already mentioned." Miss Seward choosed to imagine that there was an early attachment between Miss Boothby and Johnson; but all that lady's stories are worse than apocryphal. The first letter, dated July 1753, proves that the acquaintance was then recent.— CROKER.

3 The words of Sir John Hawkins, p. 316.- BOSWELL. 4 Sir Thomas Aston, Bart., who died in January, 1724-5, left one son, named Thomas also, and eight daughters. Of the daughters, Catherine married Johnson's friend, the Hon. Henry Hervey; Margaret, Gilbert Walmsley. Another of these ladies [Jane] married the Rev. Mr. Gastrell [the man who cut down Shakspeare's mulberry-tree]; Mary, or Molly Aston, as she was usually called, became the wife of Captain Brodie of the navy. Another sister, who was unmarried, was living at Lichfield in 1776. - MALONE. the latter, whose name was Elizabeth, Miss Seward has put an injurious character into the mouth of Dr. Johnson

Of

"Julii 16. Bos

In the forlorn state of his circumstances, he accepted of an offer to be employed as usher 6, in the school of Market-Bosworth, in Leicestershire, to which it appears, from one of his little fragments of a diary, that he went on foot, on the 16th of July, But it is not true, as has vortiam pedes petii." been erroneously related, that he was assistant to the famous Anthony Blackwall, whose merit has been honoured by the testimony of Bishop Hurd, who was his scholar; for Mr. Black wall

(in a dialogue which she (falsely I have no doubt) reports herself to have had with him). She died in 1785, in the 78th year of her age. The youngest sister married a Mr. Prujean (post, 2d Jan. 1779).- CROKER.

:

5 Mr. Boswell should not have admitted this uncharitable insinuation of an anonymous informant against poor Mrs. Des moulins who was, probably, not popular with "the ladies of Lichfield." She is supposed to have forfeited the protection of her own family by, what they thought, a derogatory marriage with a writing-master. She and her son were in close and grateful attendance on Johnson in his last days, and she was watching him at the moment of death. CROKER. 6 Mr. Nichols, on the authority of this letter to Mr. Hickman, who was master of the Grammar School at Stourbridge, thought that Johnson had at this time made a fruitless attempt to obtain the situation of usher there. (Literary Anecdotes, vol. viii. p. 416.) But I do not think that the letter itself is quite conclusive on this point. His failure in such an object would be a strange theme for a poetical coinpliment. See post, p. 32. n. 4. - CROKER.

7 There is here (as Mr. James Boswell observes to me) a slight inaccuracy. Bishop Hurd, in the Epistle Dedicatory prefixed to his Commentary on Horace's Art of Poetry, &c. does not praise Black wall, but the Rev. Mr. Budworth, head. master of the Grammar School at Brewood, in Staffordshire who had himself been bred under Blackwall. - MALONE. W shall see presently (p.24. n.1), on the authority of Mr. Nichols that Johnson proposed himself to Mr. Budworth, as an assist -CROKER.

ant.

[ocr errors]

died on the 8th of April, 1730, more than a year before Johnson left the University.'

He continued to live as Mr. Hector's guest for about six months, and then hired lodgings in another part of the town 3, finding himself as well situated at Birmingham as he supposed he could be any where, while he had no settled plan of life, and very scanty means of subsistHe made some valuable acquaintances there, amongst whom were Mr. Porter, a mercer, whose widow he afterwards married, and Mr. Taylor, who, by his ingenuity in mechanical inventions, and his success in trade, acquired an immense fortune. But the comfort of being near Mr. Hector, his old schoolfellow and intimate friend, was Johnson's chief inducement to continue here.

This employment was very irksome to him in every respect, and he complained grievously of it in his letters to his friend Mr. Hector, who was now settled as a surgeon at Birmingham. The letters are lost; but Mr. Hector recol-ence. lects his writing" that the poet had described the dull sameness of his existence in these words, Vitam continet una dies' (one day contains the whole of my life); that it was unvaried as the note of the cuckoo; and that he did not know whether it was more disagreeable for him to teach, or the boys to learn, the grammar rules." His general aversion to this painful drudgery was greatly enhanced by a disagreement between him and Sir Wolstan Dixie, the patron of the school, in whose house, I have been told, he officiated as a kind of domestic chaplain, so far, at least, as to say grace at table, but was treated with what he represented as intolerable harshness; and, after suffering for a few months such complicated misery, he relinquished a situation which all his life afterwards he recollected with the strongest aversion, and even a degree of horror. But it is probable that at this period, whatever uneasiness he may have endured, he laid the foundation of much future eminence by application to his studies.

Being now again totally unoccupied, he was invited by Mr. Hector to pass some time with him at Birmingham, as his guest, at the house of Mr. Warren, with whom Mr. Hector lodged and boarded. Mr. Warren was the first established bookseller in Birmingham, and was very attentive to Johnson, who he soon found could be of much service to him in his trade, by his knowledge of literature; and he even obtained the assistance of his pen in furnishing some numbers of a periodical essay, printed in the newspaper of which Warren was proprietor. After very diligent inquiry, I have not been able to recover those early specimens of that particular mode of writing by which Johnson afterwards so greatly distinguished himself.

1 See Gent. Mag., Dec. 1784, p. 957.- BOSWELL. But see te, p. 18. n. 3, the disproof of this assertion.-CROKER. 1 This portion of Johnson's life is involved in great obscurity. Mr. Malone states, that he had read a letter of Jobcson's to a friend, dated July 27. 1732, saying, that he had then recently left Sir Wolstan Dixie's house, and had some hopes of succeeding, either as master or usher, in the school of Ashbourn. Now if Mr. Boswell be right in applying the entry in Johnson's diary of July 16. 1732, to his first visit to Bosworth, his sojourn there must have been less than ten days; a time too short to be characterised as "a period of complicated misery," and to be remembered during a long

with the strongest aversion and horror." The probable solution of these difficulties is, that the walk to Bosworth, the 16th July, 1752, was not his first appearance there, hat that having been called thence to Lichfield to receive his share of his father's property (which we have just seen that he did on the 15th July), he returned to Bosworth on the 16th. perhaps for the purpose of making his final arrangements for leaving it, which he did within ten days. The Memoirs already quoted say that "he went to Bosworth immediately after he had left Oxford, and remained there much longer than was expected by any one who knew him, dously employed in the pursuit of intellectual acquisidan," bat we have seen that he was "unemployed" at Lich

In what manner he employed his pen at this period, or whether he derived from it any pecuniary advantage, I have not been able to ascertain. He probably got a little money from Mr. Warren; and we are certain, that he executed here one piece of literary labour, of which Mr. Hector has favoured me with a minute account. Having mentioned that he had read at Pembroke College a Voyage to Abyssinia, by Lobo, a Portuguese Jesuit, and that he thought an abridgment and translation of it from the French into English might be an useful and profitable publication, Mr. Warren and Mr. Hector joined in urging him to undertake it. He accordingly agreed; and the book not being to be found in Birmingham, he borrowed it of Pembroke College. A part of the work being very soon done, one Osborn, who was Mr. Warren's printer, was set to work with what was ready, and Johnson engaged to supply the press with copy as it should be wanted; but his constitutional indolence soon prevailed, and the work was at a stand. Mr. Hector, who knew that a motive of humanity would be the most prevailing argument with his friend, went to Johnson, and represented to him that the printer could have no other employment till this undertaking was finished, and that the poor man and his family were suffering. Johnson, upon this, exerted the powers of his mind, though his body was. relaxed. He lay in bed with the book, which was a quarto, before him,

field in October, 1731. I conclude from all this that he might have been usher to Blackwall in the spring of 1730, and that his connexion with Sir Wolstan Dixie commenced towards the close of 1731, or, as Hawkins says, in the ensuing spring, and ended in July, 1732. It seems very extraordinary that the laborious diligence and lively curiosity of Hawkins, Murphy, Malone, and above all Boswell, were able to discover so little of the history of Johnson's life from December, 1729, to his marriage in July, 1736, and that what they have told should be liable to so much doubt. It may be inferred, that it was a period to which Johnson looked back with little satisfaction, and of which he did not love to talk. There seems reason to suspect that Sir Wolstan Dixie's temper was, to say the least of it, irregular and violent, and Johnson's own mind had been recently in a state of morbid disturbance. - CROKER.

3 Sir John Hawkins states, from one of Johnson's diaries, that, in June, 1753, he lodged in Birmingham, at the house of a person named Jervis, probably a relation of Mrs. Porter, whom he afterwards married, and whose maiden name was Jervis. MALONE.

4 Father Jerome Lobo, a Jesuit missionary, was born at Lisbon, in 1593, where he died, in 1678. His Voyage to Abyssinia was translated from the Portuguese into French, by the Abbé Le Grand, in 1728. WRIGHT.

and dictated while Hector wrote. Mr. Hector carried the sheets to the press, and corrected almost all the proof sheets, very few of which In this manner, were even seen by Johnson. with the aid of Mr. Hector's active friendship, the book was completed, and was published in 1735, with London upon the title-page, though it was in reality printed at Birmingham, a device too common with provincial publishers. For this work he had from Mr. Warren only the sum of five guineas.

This being the first prose work of Johnson, it is a curious object of enquiry how much may be traced in it of that style which marks his subsequent writings with such peculiar excellence; with so happy an union of force, vivacity, and perspicuity. I have perused the book with this view, and have found that here, as I believe in every other translation, there is in the work itself no vestige of the translator's own style; for the language of translation being adapted to the thoughts of another person, insensibly follows their cast, and, as it were, runs into a mould that is ready prepared.

Thus, for instance, taking the first sentence that occurs at the opening of the book, p. 4.:

"I lived here above a year, and completed my studies in divinity; in which time some letters were received from the fathers of Ethiopia, with an account that Sultan Segned, Emperor of Abyssinia, was converted to the church of Rome; that many of his subjects had followed his example, and that there was a great want of missionaries to improve these prosperous beginnings. Every body was very desirous of seconding the zeal of our fathers, and of sending them the assistance they requested; to which we were the more encouraged, because the Emperor's letter informed our Provincial, that we might easily enter his dominions by the way of Dancala; but, unhappily, the secretary wrote Geila for Dancala, which cost two of our fathers their

lives."

Every one acquainted with Johnson's manner will be sensible that there is nothing of it here; but that this sentence might have been composed by any other man. But, in the Preface the Johnsonian style begins to appear; and though use had not yet taught his wing a permanent and equable flight, there are parts of it which exhibit his best manner in full vigour. I had once the pleasure of examining it with Mr. Edmund Burke, who confirmed me in this opinion, by his superior critical sagacity, and was, I remember, much delighted with the following specimen 1:·

[ocr errors]

The Portuguese traveller, contrary to the general vein of his countrymen, has amused his reader with no romantic absurdity, or incredible

1 This very extract was published in the Memoirs as an early specimen of Johnson's peculiar style, long before Mr. Boswell's notice of it. — CROKER, 1846.

2. See Rambler, No. 103. [ Curiosity is the thirst of the soul," &c.] - BOSWELL.

3 May we not trace a fanciful similarity between Politian and Johnson? Huetius, speaking of Paulus Pelissonius Fontanerius, says, "—in quo natura, ut olim in Angelo Politiano,

[merged small][ocr errors]

He appears, by his modest and unaffected narration, to have described things as he saw them, to have copied nature from the life, and to have consulted his senses, not his imagination. He meets with no basilisks that destroy with their eyes, his crocodiles devour their prey without tears, and his cataracts fall from the rocks without deafening the neighbouring inhabitants.

[ocr errors]

The reader will here find no regions cursed with irremediable barrenness, or blest with spontaneous fecundity; no perpetual gloom, or unceasing sunshine; nor are the nations here described either devoid of all sense of humanity, or consummate in all private or social virtues. Here are no Hottentots without religious policy or articulate language; no Chinese perfectly polite, and completely skilled in all sciences; he will discover, what will always be discovered by a diligent and impartial inquirer, that wherever human nature is to be found, there is a mixture of vice and virtue, a contest of passion and reason; and that the Creator doth not appear partial in his distributions, but has balanced, in most countries, their particular inconveniences by particular favours."

Here we have an early example of that brilliant and energetic expression, which, upon innumerable occasions in his subsequent life, justly impressed the world with the highest admiration. Nor can any one, conversant with the writings of Johnson, fail to discern his hand in this passage of the Dedication to John Warren, Esq., of Pembrokeshire, though it is ascribed to Warren the bookseller:

[ocr errors]

"A generous and elevated mind is distinguished by nothing more certainly than an eminent degree of curiosity; nor is that curiosity ever more agreeably or usefully employed, than in examining the laws and customs of foreign nations. I hope, therefore, the present I now presume to make will not be thought improper; which, however, it is not my business as a dedicator to commend, nor as a bookseller to depreciate."

It is reasonable to suppose, that his having been thus accidentally led to a particular study of the history and manners of Abyssinia, was the remote occasion of his writing, many years afterwards, his admirable philosophical tale, the principal scene of which is laid in that country.

Johnson returned to Lichfield early in 1734, and in August that year he made an attempt to procure some little subsistence by his pen; for he published proposals for printing by subscription the Latin Poems of Politian3: “An

deformitatem oris excellentis ingenii præstantià compensavit." Comment. de reb. ad eum pertin. Edit. Amstel. 1718p. 200.- BosWELL.

de

In this learned masquerade of "Paulus Pelissonius Fontanerius," we have some difficulty in detecting Madame Sevigne's friend, Pelisson, of whom M. de Guilleragues used the phrase, which has since grown into a proverb, qu'i abusait de la permission qu'ont les hommes d'être laids.

64

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »