and so turned away with disdain. He laughed very heartily at the recollection of his own insolence, and said they endured it from him with wonderful acquiescence, and a gentleness that, whenever he thought of it, astonished himself. He told me too, that when he made his first declamation, he wrote over but one copy, and that coarsely; and having given it into the hand of the tutor who stood to receive it as he passed, was obliged to begin by chance and continue on how he could, for he had got but little of it by heart; so fairly trusting to his present powers for immediate supply, he finished by adding astonishment to the applause of all who knew how little was owing to study. A prodigious risque, however, said some one: "Not at all (exclaims Johnson), no man I suppose leaps at once into deep water who does not know how to swim." I doubt not but this story will be told by many of his biographers, and said so to him when he told it me on the 18th of July, 1773. "And who will be my biographer (said he), do you think?" "Goldsmith, no doubt,” replied I, "and he will do it the best among us." "The dog would write it best to be sure, replied he; but his particular malice towards me, and general disregard for truth, would make the book useless to all, and injurious to my character." "Oh! as to that," said I, "we should all fasten upon him, and force him to do you justice; but the worst is, the Doctor does not know your life; nor can I tell indeed who does, except Dr. Taylor of Ashbourne." "Why Taylor," said he, "is better acquainted with my heart than any man or woman now alive; and the history of my Oxford exploits lies all between him and Adams; but Dr. James knows my very early days better than he. After my coming to London to drive the world about a little, you must all go to Jack Hawkesworth for anecdotes: I lived in great familiarity with him (though I think there was not much affection) from the year 1753 till the time Mr. Thrale and you took me up. I intend, however, to disappoint the rogues, and either make you write the life, with Taylor's intelligence; or, which is better, do it myself, after outliving you all. I am now (added he), keeping a diary, in hopes of using it for that purpose some time." Here the conversation stopped, from my accidentally looking in an old magazine of the year 1768, where I saw the following lines with his name to them, and asked if they were his. VERSES SAID TO BE WRITTEN BY DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON, at the REQUEST OF A GENTLEMAN TO WHOM A LADY HAD 66 GIVEN A SPRIG OF MYRTLE. "What hopes, what terrors, does thy gift ereate, Why now, do but see how the world is gaping for a wonder! (cries Mr. Johnson) I think it is now just forty years ago that a young fellow had a sprig of myrtle given him by a girl he courted, and asked me to write him some verses that he might present her in return. I promised, but forgot; and when he called for his lines at the time agreed on— -Sit still a moment (says I), dear Mund, and I'll fetch them thee so stepped aside for five minutes, and wrote the nonsense you now keep such a stir about." Upon revising these Anecdotes, it is impossible not to be struck with shame and regret that one treasured no more of them up; but no experience is sufficient to cure the vice of negligence: whatever one sees constantly, or might see constantly, becomes uninteresting; and we suffer every trivial occupation, every slight amusement, to hinder us from writing down, what indeed we cannot chuse but remember; but what we should wish to recollect with pleasure, unpoisoned by remorse for not remembering more. While I write this, I neglect impressing my mind with the wonders of art, and beauties of nature, that now surround me; and shall one day, perhaps, think on the hours I might have profitably passed in the Florentine Gallery, and reflecting on Raphael's St. John at that time, as 'upon Johnson's conversation in this moment, may justly exclaim of the months spent by me most delightfully in Italy— "That I priz'd every hour that pass'd by; Beyond all that had pleas'd me before; But now they are past, and I sigh And I grieve that I priz'd them no more." SHENSTONE. Dr. Johnson delighted in his own partiality for Oxford; and one day, at my house, entertained five members of the other university with various instances of the superiority of Oxford, enumerating the gigantic names of many men whom it had produced, with apparent triumph. At last I said to him, "Why there happens to be no less than five Cambridge men in the room now. "I did not (said he) think of that till you told me; but the wolf don't count the sheep." When the company were retired, we happened to be talking of Dr. Barnard, the Provost of Eton, who died about that time; and after a long and just eulogium on his wit, his learning, and his goodness of heart : "He was the only man too (says Mr. Johnson quite seriously) that did justice to my good breeding; and you may observe that I am well-bred to a degree of needless scrupulosity. No man, (continued he, not observing the amazement of his hearers) no man is so cautious not to interrupt another; no man thinks it so necessary to appear attentive when others are speaking; no man so steadily refuses preference to himself, or so willingly bestows it on another, as I do; no body holds so strongly as I do the necessity of ceremony, and the ill effects which follow the breach of it: yet people think me rude; but Barnard did me justice." "'Tis pity," said I, laughing, " that he had not heard you compliment the Cambridge men after dinner Why (replied he) I was inclined to down them sure to-day." enough; but then a fellow deserves to be of Oxford that talks so." I have heard him at other times relate how he used to sit in some coffee-house there, and turn M- -'s C-r-ct-c-s into ridicule for the diversion of himself and of chance comers-in. "The Elf-da (says he) was too exquisitely pretty; I could make no fun out of that.' When upon some occasions he would express his astonishment that he should have an enemy in the world, while he had been doing nothing but good to his neighbours, I used to make him recollect these circumstances: 'Why child (said he), what harm could that do the fellow? I always thought very well of M-n for a Cambridge man; he is, I believe, a mighty blameless character." Such tricks were, however, the more unpardonable in Mr. Johnson, because no one could harangue like him about the difficulty always found in for 66 66 Mr. giving petty injuries, or in provoking by needless offence. Jordan, his tutor, had much of his affection, though he despised his want of scholastic learning. "That creature would (said he) defend his pupils to the last: no young lad under his care should suffer for committing slight improprieties, while he had breath to defend, or power to protect them. If I had had sons to send to college (added he) Jordan should have been their tutor." Sir William Browne the physician, who lived to a very extraordinary age, and was in other respects an odd mortal, with more genius than understanding, and more self-sufficiency than wit, was the only person who ventured to oppose Mr. Johnson, when he had a mind to shine by exalting his favourite university, and to express his contempt of the Whiggish notions which prevail at Cambridge. He did it once, however, with surprising felicity: his antagonist having repeated with an air of triumph the famous epigram written by Dr. Trapp, "Our royal master saw, with heedful eyes, The wants of his two universities : Troops he to Oxford sent, as knowing why That learned body wanted loyalty: But books to Cambridge gave, as, well discerning, That that right loyal body wanted learning," Which, says Sir William, might well be answered thus: "The king to Oxford sent his troop of horse, Mr. Johnson did him the justice to say, it was one of the happiest extemporaneous productions he ever met with; though he once comically confessed, that he hated to repeat the wit of a whig urged in support of whiggism. Says Garrick to him one day, "Why did not you make me a tory, when we lived so much together, you love to make people tories?" " 'Why (says Johnson, pulling a heap of halfpence from his pocket), did not the king make these guineas ?" Of Mr. Johnson's toryism the world has long been witness, and the political pamphlets written by him in defence of his party, are vigorous and elegant. He often delighted his imagination with the thoughts of having destroyed Junius, an anony mous writer who flourished in the years 1769 and 1770, and who kept himself so ingeniously concealed from every endeavour to detect him, that no probable guess was, I believe, ever formed concerning the author's name, though at that time the subject of general conversation. Mr. Johnson made us all laugh one day, because I had received a remarkably fine Stilton cheese as a present from some person who had packed and directed it carefully, but without mentioning whence it came. Mr. Thrale, desirous to know who we were obliged to, asked every friend as they came in, but nobody owned it: "Depend upon it, Sir (says Johnson), it was sent by Junius.” The "False Alarm," his first and favourite pamphlet, was written at our house between eight o'clock on Wednesday night and twelve o'clock on Thursday night, we read it to Mr. Thrale when he came very late home from the House of Commons: the other political tracts followed in their order. I have forgotten which contains the stroke at Junius; but shall for ever remember the pleasure it gave him to have written it. It was however in the year 1775 that Mr. Edmund Burke made the famous speech in parliament' that struck even foes with admiration, and friends with delight. Among the nameless thousands who are 'contented to echo those praises they have not skill to invent, I ventured, before Dr. Johnson himself, to applaud, with rapture, the beautiful passage in it concerning Lord Bathurst and the Angel; which, said our Doctor, had I been in the house, I would have answered thus: "Suppose, Mr. Speaker, that to Wharton, or to Marlborough, or to any of the eminent whigs of the last age, the devil had, not with any great impropriety, consented to appear; he would perhaps in somewhat like these words have commenced the conversation: "You seem, my Lord, to be concerned at the judicious apprehension, that while you are sapping the foundations of royalty at home, and propagating here the dangerous doctrine of resistance; the distance of America may secure its inhabitants from your arts, though active: but I will unfold to you the gay prospects of futurity. This people, now so innocent and harmless, shall draw the sword against their mother country, and 1 On the 22nd of March, 1775, upon moving his resolutions for conciliation with America.-Editor. |