whatever be your fortune, be certain, dear Sir, that you carry with you my kind wishes; and that whether you return hither, or stay in the other hemisphere, to hear that you are happy will give pleasure to, Sir,

“June 1, 1762.”

"Your most affectionate humble servant,
"SAM. JOHNSON.

A lady having at this time solicited him to obtain the Archbishop of Canterbury's patronage to have her son sent to the University, one of those solicitations which are too frequent, where people, anxious for a particular object, do not consider propriety. or the opportunity which the persons whom they solicit have to assist them, he wrote to her the following answer; with a copy of which I am favoured by the Reverend Dr. Farmer, Master of Emanuel College, Cambridge.

MADAM,-

I HOPE you will believe that my delay in answering your letter could proceed only from my unwillingness to destroy any hope that you had formed. Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain: and expectations, improperly indulged, must end in disappointment. If it be asked, what is the improper expectation which it is dangerous to indulge, experience will quickly answer, that it is such expectation as is dictated not by reason, but by desire; expectation raised, not by the common occurrences of life, but by the wants of the expectant; an expectation that requires the common course of things to be changed, and the general rules of action to be broken.

"When you made your request to me, you should have considered, Madam, what you were asking. You ask me to solicit a great man, to whom I never spoke. for a young person whom I had never seen, upon a supposition which I had no means of knowing to be true. There is no reason why, amongst all the great, I should choose to supplicate the Archbishop, nor why, among all the possible objects of his bounty, the Archbishop should choose your son. I know, Madam, how unwillingly conviction is admitted, when interest opposes it; but surely, Madam, you must allow, that there is no reason why that should be done by me, which every other man may do with equal reason, and which, indeed, no man can do properly, without some very particular relation both to the Archbishop and to you. If I could help you in this exigence by any proper means, it would give me pleasure; but this proposal is so very remote from usual methods, that I cannot comply with it, but at the risk of such answer and suspicions as I believe you do not wish me to undergo. "I have seen your son this morning; he seems a pretty youth, and will, perhaps. find some better friend than I can procure him; but though he should at last miss the University, he may still be wise, useful, and happy.

"HOWEVER justly you may accuse me for want of punctuality in correspondence I am not so far lost in negligence as to omit the opportunity of writing to you, which Mr. Beauclerk's passage through Milan affords me.

Etat. 53]

DEATH OF RICHARDSON

223

"I suppose you received the Idlers, and I intend that you shall soon receive "Shakspeare," that you may explain his works to the ladies of Italy and tell them the story of the editor, among the other strange narratives with which your long residence in this unknown region has

supplied you.

"As you have now been long away, I suppose your curiosity may pant for some news of your old friends. Miss Williams and

I live much as we did. Miss Cotterell still continues to cling to Mrs. Porter, and Charlotte is now big of the fourth child. Mr. Reynolds gets six thousands a year. Levet is lately married, not without much suspicion that he has been wretchedly cheated in his match.* Mr. Chambers is gone this day, for the first time, the circuit with the Judges. Mr. Richardson + is dead of an apoplexy, and his second daughter has married a merchant.

"My vanity or my kindness makes me flatter myself that you would rather hear of me than of those whom I have mentioned; but of myself I have very little which I care to tell. Last winter I went down to my native town, where I found the streets much narrower and shorter than I thought I had left them, inhabited by a new race of people, to whom I was very little known. My playfellows were grown old, and forced me to suspect that I was no longer young. My only remaining friend has changed his principles, and was become the tool of the predominant faction. My daughter-in-law, from whom I expected most, and whom I met with. sincere benevolence, has lost the beauty and gaiety of youth, without having gained much of the wisdom of age. I wandered about for five days, and took the first

Distinguished himself in the Douglas and Hamilton cause and filled various important posts. In 1780 he was created Baron Loughborough and presided at the trial of the Gordon Rioters; he became Lord Chancellor in 1793 and Earl of Rosslyn in 1801. He was instrumental in obtaining for Johnson a pension.

[" Levet married, when he was near sixty, a woman of the town, who had persuaded him (notwithstanding that their place of congress was a small coal shed in Fetter Lane), that she was nearly related to a man of fortune, but was kept by him out of large possessions. Johnson used to say that, compared with the marvels of this transaction, the Arabian Nights' seemed familiar occurrences. Never was hero more completely duped. He had not been married four months before a writ was taken out against him, for debts contracted by his wife. He was secreted and his friend then procured him a protection from a foreign minister. In a short time afterwards she ran away from him, and was tried at the Old Bailey for picking pockets. She pleaded her own cause and was acquitted; a separation took place, and Johnson then took Levet home, where he continued till his death."Steevens.]

† [Samuel Richardson, the author of " Clarissa," "Sir Charles Grandison," etc. He died July 4, 1761, aged 72. M.]

convenient opportunity of returning to a place, where. if there is not much happiness, there is, at least, such a diversity of good and evil, that slight vexations do not fix upon the heart.

“I think in a few weeks to try another excursion; though to what end? Let me know, my Baretti, what has been the result of your return to your own country : whether time has made any alteration for the better, and whether, when the first raptures of salutation were over, you did not find your thoughts confessed their disappointment.

"Moral sentences appear ostentatious and tumid, when they have no greater occasions than the journey of a wit to his own town; yet such pleasures and such pains make up the general mass of life; and as nothing is little to him that feels it with great sensibility, a mind able to see common incidents in their real state is disposed by very common incidents to very serious contemplations. Let us trust that a time will come, when the present moment shall be no longer irksome; when we shall not borrow all our happiness from hope, which at last is to end in disappointment.

"I beg that you will show Mr. Beauclerk all the civilities which you have in your power; for he has always been kind to me.

I have lately seen Mr. Stratico, Professor of Padua, who has told me of your quarrel with an Abbot of the Celestine order; but had not the particulars very ready in his memory. When you write to Mr. Marsili, let him know that I remember him with kindness.

"May you, my Baretti, be very happy at Milan, or some other place nearer

to, Sir,

Your most affectionate humble servant,

"SAM. JOHNSON.”

The accession of George the Third to the throne of these kingdoms opened a new and brighter prospect to men of literary merit, who had been honoured with no mark of royal favour in the preceding reign. His present Majesty's education in this country, as well as his taste and beneficence, prompted him to be the patron of science and the arts; and early this year Johnson having been represented to him as a very learned and good man, without any certain provision, his Majesty was pleased to grant him a pension of three hundred pounds a year. The Earl of Bute. who was then Prime Minister, had the honour to announce this instance of his Sovereign's bounty, concerning which, many and various stories, all equally erroneous, have been propagated; maliciously representing it as a political bribe to Johnson, to desert his avowed principles, and become the tool of a government which he held to be founded in usurpation. I have taken care to have it in my power to refute them from the most authentic information. Lord Bute told me that Mr. Wedderburn, now Lord Loughborough, was the person who first mentioned this subject to him. Lord Loughborough told me that the pension was granted to Johnson solely as the reward of his literary merit, without any stipulation whatever, or even tacit understanding that he should write for the Administration. His Lordship added that he was confident the political tracts which Johnson afterwards did write, as they were entirely consonant with his own opinions, would have been written by him, though no pension had been granted to him.

Mr. Thomas Sheridan and Mr. Murphy, who then lived a good deal both with him and Mr. Wedderburn, told me that they previously talked with Johnson upon

Year Madam

If I write but felder to

it is because

it felden happens that I have any thing to boll ревитверень

гри

give you glosure, but Caffe Mon day I was fent for by the chief ministe then there the Earl of Bute, who sold one that the they had empowered lum es do Jessie this for one, and set me knew that be avers granked one of three hanched year. Bu fo kind as to Will Kity. I as Dearest Madam

To Mis Porter
до жер

in Lichfield

Facsimile letter of Dr. Johnson to his step-daughter, Lucy Porter, acquainting her of the pension of three hundred a year that had just been conferred on him by George III.

15-(227)

this matter, and that it was perfectly understood by all parties that the pension was merely honorary. Sir Joshua Reynolds told me that Johnson called on him. after his Majesty's intention had been notified to him, and said he wished to consult his friends as to the propriety of his accepting this mark of the royal favour, after the definitions which he had given in his Dictionary of pension and pensioners. He said he should not have Sir Joshua's answer till the next day, when he would call again, and desired he might think of it. Sir Joshua answered that he was clear to give his opinion then, that there could be no objection to his receiving from the King a reward for literary merit; and that certainly the definitions in his Dictionary were not applicable to him. Johnson, it should seem, was satisfied, for he did not call again till he had accepted the pension, and waited on Lord Bute to thank him. He then told Sir Joshua that Lord Bute said to him expressly, "It is not given you for anything you are to do, but for what you have done." * His Lordship, he said, behaved in the handsomest manner. He repeated the words twice that he might be sure Johnson heard them, and thus set his mind perfectly at ease. This nobleman, who has been so virulently abused, acted with great honour in this instance, and displayed a mind truly liberal. A minister of a more narrow and selfish disposition would have availed himself of such an opportunity to fix an implied obligation on a man of Johnson's powerful talents to give him his support.

PLYMOUTH GARRISON

Mr. Murphy and the late Mr. Sheridan severally contended for the

distinction of having been the first who mentioned to Mr. Wedderburn that Johnson ought to have a pension. When I spoke of this to Lord Loughborough, wishing to know if he recollected the prime mover in the business, he said, "All his friends assisted" and when I told him that Mr. Sheridan strenuously asserted his claim to it, his Lordship said, "He rang the bell." And it is but just to add that Mr. Sheridan told me that when he communicated to Dr. Johnson that a pension was to be granted him, he replied in a fervour of gratitude, "The English language does not afford me terms adequate to my feelings on this occasion. I must have recourse to the French. I am pénétré with his Majesty's goodness." When I repeated this to Dr. Johnson, he did not contradict it.

His definitions of pension and pensioner, partly founded on the satirical verses of Pope, which he quotes, may be generally true; and yet everybody must allow that there may be, and have been, instances of pensions given and received upon liberal and honourable terms. Thus, then, it is clear, that there was nothing inconsistent or humiliating in Johnson's accepting of a pension so unconditionally and so honourably offered to him.

* [This was said by Lord Bute, as Dr. Burney was informed by Johnson himself, in answer to a question which he put, previously to his acceptance of the intended bounty: Pray, my Lord, what am I expected to do for this pension?" M.]