480

Mr. Thrale's diet.

[A.D. 1780. lessons a day to ladies, at five and threepence a lesson. Miss Burney says she is a great performer; and I respect the wench for getting her living so prettily; she is very modest and prettymannered, and not seventeen years old.

'You live in a fine whirl indeed; if I did not write regularly you would half forget me, and that would be very wrong, for I felt my regard for you in my face last night, when the criticisms were going on.

"This morning it was all connoisseurship; we went to see some pictures painted by a gentleman-artist, Mr. Taylor, of this place; my master makes one, every where, and has got a good dawling' companion to ride with him now. * * * * * * *. He looks well enough, but I have no notion of health for a man whose mouth cannot be sewed up'. Burney3 and I and Queeney teize him every meal he eats, and Mrs. Montagu is quite serious with him; but what can one do? He will eat, I think, and if he does eat I know he will not live; it makes me very unhappy, but I must bear it. Let me always have your friendship. I am, most sincerely, dear Sir, 'Your faithful servant,

'H. L. T.'

'Bath, Friday, April 28.'

In Johnson's Dictionary is neither dawling nor dawdling. He uses dawdle, post, June 3, 1781.

' Miss Burney shews how luxurious a table Mr. Thrale kept. 'We had,' she records, in May 1779, 'a very grand dinner to-day, though nothing to a Streatham dinner, at the Ship Tavern [Brighton], where the officers mess, to which we were invited by the major and the captain.' As the major was a man of at least £8,000 a-year, and the captain of £4,000 or £5,000, the dinner was likely to be grand enough. Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 211. Yet when Mr. Thrale had his first stroke in 1779, Johnson wrote:-'I am the more alarmed by this violent seizure, as I can impute it to no wrong practices, or intemperance of any kind... What can he reform? or what can he add to his regularity and temperance? He can only sleep less.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 49, 51. Baretti, in a MS. note on p. 51, says :-' Dr. Johnson knew that Thrale would eat like four, let physicians preach . . . May be he did not know it, so little did he mind what people were doing. Though he sat by Thrale at dinner, he never noticed whether he eat much or little. A strange man!' Yet in a note on p. 49, Baretti had said that Thrale's seizure was caused by 'the mere grief he could not overcome of his only son's loss. Johnson knew it, but would not tell it.' See post, iv. 97, note 4.

Miss Burney. 'DR. JOHNSON

Aetat. 71.]

Letter to Mrs. Thrale.

'DR. JOHNSON TO MRS. THRALE.

'DEAREST MADAM,

481

'Mr. Thrale never will live abstinently, till he can persuade himself to live by rule'. * **. Encourage, as you can,

the musical girl.

'Nothing is more common than mutual dislike, where mutual approbation is particularly expected. There is often on both sides a vigilance not over-benevolent; and as attention is strongly excited, so that nothing drops unheeded, any difference in taste or opinion, and some difference where there is no restraint will commonly appear, immediately generates dislike.

'Never let criticisms operate upon your face or your mind; it is very rarely that an authour is hurt by his criticks. The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the socket'; a very few names may be considered as perpetual lamps that shine unconsumed. From the authour of Fitzosborne's Letters I cannot think myself in much danger. I met him only once about thirty years ago, and in some small dispute reduced him to whistle; having not seen him since, that is the last impression. Poor Moore, the fabulist', was one of the company.

'Mrs. Montagu's long stay, against her own inclination, is very convenient. You would, by your own confession, want a companion; and she is par pluribus; conversing with her you may find variety in one'

'London, May 1, 1780.'

On the 2nd of May I wrote to him, and requested that we might have another meeting somewhere in the North of England, in the autumn of this year.

1 I have taken the liberty to leave out a few lines. BOSWELL. Lines about diet and physic.

See ante, ii. 70, note 2.

'The author of Fables for the Female Sex, and of the tragedy of The Gamester, and editor of The World. Goldsmith, in his Present State of Polite Learning (ch. x.), after describing the sufferings of authors, continues: Let us not then aggravate those natural inconveniences by neglect; we have had sufficient instances of this kind already. Sale and Moore will suffice for one age at least. But they are dead, and their sorrows are over.' Mr. Forster (Life of Goldsmith, ed. 1871, ii. 484) strangely confounds Edward Moore the fabulist, with Dr. John Moore the author of Zeluco.

• Line of a song in The Spectator, Nɔ. 470. CROKER.

III.-31

From

482

Mr. Beauclerk's talents.

[A.D. 1780.

From Mr. Langton I received soon after this time a letter, of which I extract passage, relative both to Mr. Beauclerk and Dr. Johnson.

'The melancholy information you have received concerning Mr. Beauclerk's death is true. Had his talents been directed in any sufficient degree as they ought, I have always been strongly of opinion that they were calculated to make an illustrious figure; and that opinion, as it had been in part formed upon Dr. Johnson's judgement, receives more and more confirmation by hearing what, since his death, Dr. Johnson has said concerning them; a few evenings ago, he was at Mr. Vesey's', where Lord Althorpe', who was one of a numerous company there, addressed Dr. Johnson on the subject of Mr. Beauclerk's death, saying, "Our CLUB has had a great loss since we met last." He replied, "A loss, that perhaps the whole nation could not repair!" The Doctor then went on to speak of his endowments, and particularly extolled the wonderful ease with which he uttered what was highly excellent. He said, that "no man ever was so free when he was going to say a good thing, from a look that expressed that it was coming; or, when he had said it, from a look that expressed that it had come." At Mr. Thrale's, some days before when we were talking on the same subject, he said, referring to the same idea of his wonderful facility, "That Beauclerk's talents were those which he had felt himself more disposed to envy, than those of any whom he had known."

'On the evening I have spoken of above, at Mr. Vesey's, you would have been much gratified, as it exhibited an instance of the high importance in which Dr. Johnson's character is held, I think even beyond any I ever before was witness to. The company consisted chiefly of ladies, among whom were the Duchess Dowager of Portland', the Duchess of Beaufort, whom I suppose from her

1 Hannah More, in 1783 (Memoirs, i. 286), describes 'Mrs. Vesey's pleasant parties. It is a select society which meets at her house every other Tuesday, on the day on which the Turk's Head Club dine together In the evening they all meet at Mrs. Vesey's, with the addition of such other company as it is difficult to find elsewhere.'

2 Second Earl Spencer; the First Lord of the Admiralty under Pitt, and father of Lord Althorp who was leader of the House of Commons under Earl Grey. See ante, p. 444.

4 • Her childhood was celebrated by Prior in the lines beginning :'My noble, lovely little Peggy.'

CROKER.

rank

Aetat. 71.]

An evening at Mrs. Vesey's.

483

rank I must name before her mother Mrs. Boscawen, and her elder sister Mrs. Lewson, who was likewise there; Lady Lucan', Lady Clermont, and others of note both for their station and understandings. Among the gentlemen were Lord Althorpe, whom I have before named, Lord Macartney, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Lord Lucan, Mr. Wraxal', whose book you have probably seen, The Tour to the Northern Parts of Europe; a very agreeable ingenious man; Dr. Warren, Mr. Pepys, the Master in Chancery, whom I believe you know, and Dr. Barnard, the Provost of Eton3. As

'Horace Walpole (Letters, vii. 510) wrote on Feb. 5, 1781 :-'I saw Dr. Johnson last night at Lady Lucan's, who had assembled a blue stocking meeting in imitation of Mrs. Vesey's Babels. It was so blue, it was quite Mazarine-blue. Mrs. Montagu kept aloof from Johnson, like the west from the east.' In his letter of Jan. 14 (ib. p. 497), the allusion to Mrs. Vesey's Babels is explained: 'Mrs. Montagu is one of my principal entertainments at Mrs. Vesey's, who collects all the graduates and candidates for fame, where they vie with one another, till they are as unintelligible as the good folks at Babel.' 'Lady Spencer,' said Samuel Rogers, 'recollected Johnson well, as she used to see him often in her girlhood. Her mother, Lady Lucan, would say, "Nobody dines with us to-day; therefore, child, we'll go and get Dr. Johnson." So they would drive to Bolt Court and bring the doctor home with them.' Rogers's Table Talk, p. 10. 'I told Lady Lucan,' wrote Johnson on April 25, 1780, 'how long it was since she sent to me; but she said I must consider how the world rolls about her. She seemed pleased that we met again.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 107.

2 ''I have seen,' wrote Wraxall, 'the Duchess of Devonshire, then in the first bloom of youth, hanging on the sentences that fell from Johnson's lips, and contending for the nearest place to his chair. All the cynic moroseness of the philosopher and the moralist seemed to dissolve under so flattering an approach.' Wraxall's Memoirs, ed. 1815, i. 158.

' In Nichols's Lit. Anec. viii. 548, 9, Dr. Barnard is thus described: In powers of conversation I never yet knew his equal. He saw infinite variety of characters, and like Shakespeare adopted them all by turns for comic effect. He carried me to London in a hired chaise; we rose from our seat, and put our heads out of the windows, while the post-boy removed something under us. He supposed himself in the pillory, and addressed the populace against the government with all the cant of No. 45 and Co. He once told me a little anecdote of the original Parson Adams, whom he knew. 'Oh, Sir!" said he to Barnard, almost in a whisper, and with a look of horror, "would you

soon

484

Dr. Barnard, Provost of Eton.

[A.D. 1780. soon as Dr. Johnson was come in and had taken a chair', the company began to collect round him, till they became not less than four, if not five, deep; those behind standing, and listening over the heads of those that were sitting near him". The conversation for some time was chiefly between Dr. Johnson and the Provost of Eton, while the others contributed occasionally their remarks. Without attempting to detail the particulars of the conversation, which perhaps if I did, I should spin my account out to a tedious length, I thought, my dear Sir, this general account of the respect with which our valued friend was attended to, might be acceptable'.'

believe it, Sir, he was wicked from a boy;" then going up close to him, "You will be shocked-you will not believe it,—he wrote God with a little g, when he was ten years old!"'

1 In Mr. Croker's editions, ' had taken a chair' is changed into ‘had taken the chair,' and additional emphasis is given by printing these four words in italics.

The hostess must have suffered, for, according to Miss Burney, 'Lord Harcourt said, "Mrs. Vesey's fear of ceremony is really troublesome; for her eagerness to break a circle is such that she insists upon everybody's sitting with their backs one to another; that is, the chairs are drawn into little parties of three together, in a confused manner all over the room."' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 184. Miss Burney thus describes her:-" -She has the most wrinkled, sallow, time-beaten face I ever saw. She is an exceedingly well - bred woman, and of agreeable manners; but all her name in the world must, I think, have been acquired by her dexterity and skill in selecting parties, and by her address in rendering them easy with one another.' Ib. p. 244. She heard her say of a gentleman who had lately died :—'It's a very disagreeable thing, I think, when one has just made acquaintance with anybody and likes them, to have them die.' Ib. ii. 290.

3

Johnson passed over this scene very lightly. On Sunday evening I was at Mrs. Vesey's, and there was inquiry about my master, but I told them all good. There was Dr. Barnard of Eton, and we made a noise all the evening; and there was Pepys, and Wraxall till I drove him away.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 98. Wraxall was perhaps thinking of this evening when he wrote (Memoirs, ed. 1815, i. 147) :—' Those whom he could not always vanquish by the force of his intellect, by the depth and range of his arguments, and by the compass of his gigantic faculties, he silenced by rudeness; and I have myself more than once stood in the predicament which I here describe. Yet no sooner was he withdrawn, and with him had disappeared these personal imperfections, than the sublime attainments of his mind left their full effect

'To