as well as debtors; for if there were no such check, people would be apt, from the temptation of great interest, to lend to desperate persons, by whom they would lose their money. Accordingly, there are instances of ladies being ruined, by having injudiciously sunk their fortunes for high annuities, which, after a few years, ceased to be paid, in consequence of the ruined circumstances of the borrower." Mrs. Williams was very peevish'; and I wondered at Johnson's patience with her now, as I had often done on similar occasions. The truth is, that his humane consideration of the forlorn and indigent state in which this lady was left by her father induced him to treat her with the utmost tenderness, and even to be desirous of procuring her amusement, so as sometimes to incommode many of his friends, by carrying her with him to their houses, where, from her manner of eating, in consequence of her blindness, she could not but offend the delicacy of persons of nice sensations. After coffee, we went to afternoon service in St. Clement's church. Observing some beggars in the street as we walked along, I said to him, I supposed there was no civilized country in the world where the misery of want in the lowest classes of the people was prevented. JOHNSON. "I believe, sir, there is not; but it is better that some should be unhappy, than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality." When the service was ended, I went home with him, and we sat quietly by ourselves. He recommended Dr. Cheyne's books. I said, I thought Cheyne had been reckoned whimsical. "So he was," said 1 [Boswell was not partial to Mrs. Williams. Peevish she probably was; but let it be remembered that she was old, blind, poor, and a dependent. And see ante, vol. i. p. 221, a more favourable account from Malone and Miss Hawkins.-ED.] ED. Letters, v. i. p. 314. Piozzi, p. 130. he," in some things; but there is no end of objections. There are few books to which some objection or other may not be made." He added, "I would not have you read any thing else of Cheyne, but his book on Health, and his English Malady." 999 Upon the question whether a man who had been guilty of vicious actions would do well to force himself into solitude and sadness? JOHNSON. "No, sir, unless it prevent him from being vicious again. With some people, gloomy penitence is only madness turned upside down. A man may be gloomy, till, in order to be relieved from gloom, he has recourse again to criminal indulgencies." On Wednesday, 10th April, I dined with him at Mr. Thrale's, where were Mr. Murphy and some other company. Before dinner, Dr. Johnson and I passed some time by ourselves. I was sorry to find it was now resolved that the proposed journey to Italy should not take place this year. He said, "I am disappointed, to be sure; but it is not a great disappointment." I wondered to see him bear, with a philosophical calmness, what would have made most people peevish and fretful. [But he cordially assented to the reasons which operated on the minds of Mr. and Mrs. Thrale to postpone the journey, as appears from his letter to the lady.] ["TO MRS. THRALE. "9th April, 1776. "Mr. Thrale's alteration of purpose is not weakness of resolution; it is a wise man's compliance with the change of things, and with the new duties which the change produces. Whoever expects me to be angry will be disappointed. I do not even grieve at the effect; I only grieve for the cause."] [His desire, however, to go abroad was very great; and he had a longing wish, too, to leave some Latin verses at the Grand Chartreux.] I perceived that he had so warmly cherished the hope of enjoying classical scenes, that he could not easily part with the scheme; for he said, "I shall probably contrive to get to Italy some other way'. But I won't mention it to Mr. and Mrs. Thrale, as it might vex them." I suggested that going to Italy might have done Mr. and Mrs. Thrale good. JOHNSON. "I rather believe not, sir. While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it." At dinner, Mr. Murphy entertained us with the history of Mr. Joseph Simpson, a schoolfellow of Dr. Johnson's, a barrister at law, of good parts, but who fell into a dissipated course of life, incompatible with that success in his profession which he once had, and would otherwise have deservedly maintained; yet he still preserved a dignity in his deportment. He wrote a tragedy on the story of Leonidas, entitled "The Patriot." He read it to a company of lawyers, who found so many faults that he wrote it over again: so then there were two tragedies on the same subject and with the same title. Dr. Johnson told us, that one of them was still in his possession. This very piece was, after his death, published by some person who had been about him, and, for the sake of a little hasty profit, was fallaciously advertised so as to make it be believed to have been written by Johnson himself. I said, I disliked the custom which some people had of bringing their children into company, because it in a manner forced us to pay foolish compliments to please their parents. JOHNSON. "You are right, 1 [He probably may have had some idea of accompanying his friend Mr. Saunders Welsh, who, in fact, went to Italy about the 14th May of this year. See post, Feb. 1778.-ED.] 2 [See ante, v. i. p. 336, his letter to this gentleman.-ED.] p. 211. sir'. We may be excused for not caring much about other people's children, for there are many who care very little about their own children. It may be observed, that men who, from being engaged in business, or from their course of life in whatever way, soldom see their children, do not care much about them. I myself should not have had much fondness for a child of my own." MRS. THRALE. "Nay, sir, how can you talk so?" JOHNSON. "At least, I Piozzi, never wished to have a child." [On another occasion, when Mrs. Thrale was relating to him that Dr. Collier (of the commons) had observed, that the love one bore to children was from the anticipation one's mind made while one contemplated them: "We hope," says he, "that they will some time make wise men, or amiable women; and we suffer them to take up our affection beforehand. One cannot love lumps of flesh, and little infants are nothing more." "On the contrary," said Johnson, "one can scarcely help wishing, while one fondles a baby, that it may never live to become a man; for it is so probable that when he becomes a man, he should be sure to end in a scoundrel." Girls were less displeasing to him; "for as their temptations were fewer," he said, "their virtue in this life, and happiness in the next, were less improbable; and he loved," he said, "to see a knot of little misses dearly."] Mr. Murphy mentioned Dr. Johnson's having a design to publish an edition of Cowley. Johnson said, he did not know but he should; and he ex [Yet he was always kind to children, even when he blamed the parents for obtruding them. Miss Hawkins tells us that "Johnson was kind, in his way, to children: my father seldom observed me with him without recollecting the lion dandling the kid."-Mem. 1–23. See also post, circa 9th April, 1783.-ED.] 2 [It seems not easy to account for Mrs. Thrale's presence in London on the 10th April. She appears by the correspondence with Johnson to have been at Bath, to which place Johnson addressed a letter to her on the 9th. See ante, p. 392. ED.] pressed his disapprobation of Dr. Hurd, for having published a mutilated edition under the title of "Select Works of Abraham Cowley." Mr. Murphy thought it a bad precedent; observing, that any authour might be used in the same manner: and that it was pleasing to see the variety of an authour's compositions at different periods. We talked of Flatman's Poems; and Mrs. Thrale observed, that Pope had partly borrowed from him "The Dying Christian to his Soul." Johnson repeated Rochester's verses upon Flatman, which I think by much too severe: "Nor that slow drudge in swift Pindarick strains, And rides a jaded muse, whipt with loose reins." I like to recollect all the passages that I heard Johnson repeat: it stamps a value on them. He told us that the book entitled "The Lives of the Poets," by Mr. Cibber, was entirely compiled by Mr. Shiels', a Scotchman, one of his amanuenses. [Here followed, in the former editions, a note containing a long extract from the Monthly Review for 1792, controverting the above assertion, which, on account of its length, the Editor has thrown into the Appendix; but he must observe, with more immediate reference to the statement in the text, that notwithstanding the weight which must be given to Dr. Johnson's repeated assertions on a subject in which he alleged that he had indisputable evidence in his own possession, yet there are some circumstances which seem at variance with his statements. It is true that the title-page of the first volume says, "compiled by Mr. Cibber," but all the other volumes have "compiled by Mr. Cibber and other hands;" so that Johnson was certainly mistaken in representing that Cibber was held out as the sole author. In the third vol., p. 156, the life of Betterton, the actor, is announced as " written by R. S." no doubt Robert Shiels, and to it is appended the following note, "As Mr. Theophilus Cibber is publishing (in another work) the Lives and Character of eminent Actors,' he leaves to other gentlemen concerned in this work the account of some players, who could not be omitted herein as poets." A similar notice accompanies the Life of Booth, v. iv. p. 178; and again, in a note on the "Life of Thomson," vol. v. p. 211, Theophilus Cibber, in his own name, states, that he read the tragedy of Agamemnon to the theatrical synod with so much applause, that he was selected to play the part of Melisander. These circumstances prove that "a Cibber" had some share in the work,-that there was no intention to conceal that it was Theophilus,—and that Robert Shiels and others were avowed assistants. Mr. Boswell, in a former passage, (see ante, vol. i. p. 161.) intimated, that "some choice passages of these lives were written by Johnson himself." That opinion the Editor thought that Johnson's own assertion sufficiently negatived; but he must admit, on reconsideration, that there is some |