the superiority of his talents, made no man think worse of himself by being his rival, seemed always to listen, did not oblige you to hear much from him, and did not oppose what you said. Every body liked him; but he had no friends, as I understand the word, nobody with whom he exchanged intimate thoughts. People were willing to think well of every thing about him. A gentleman was making an affecting rant, as many people do, of great feelings about his dear son,' who was at school near London; how anxious he was lest he might be ill, and what he would give to see him. 'Can't yon,' said Fitzherbert, ‘take a postchaise and go to him?" This, to be sure, finished the affected man, but there was not much in it1. However, this was circulated as wit for a whole winter, and I believe part of a summer too; a proof that he was no very witty man. He was an instance of the truth of the observation, that a man will please more upon the whole by negative qualities than by positive; by never offending, than by giving a great deal of delight. In the first place, men hate more steadily than they love; and if I have said something to hurt a man once, I shall not get the better of this by saying many things to please Piozzi, him." [Of Mrs. Fitzherbert he always spoke with esteem and tenderness, and with a veneration very difficult to deserve. "That woman," said he, "loved her husband as we hope and desire to be loved by our guardian angel. Fitzherbert was a gay, good

p. 122.

2

1 Dr. Gisborne, physician to his majesty's household, has obligingly communicated to me a fuller account of this story than had reached Dr. Johnson. The affected gentleman was the late John Gilbert Cooper, esq. authour of a Life of Socrates, and of some poems in Dodsley's collection. Mr. Fitzherbert found him one morning, apparently, in such violent agitation, on account of the indisposition of his son, as to seem beyond the power of comfort. At length, however, he exclaimed, "I'll write an elegy." Mr. Fitzherbert, being satisfied by this of the sincerity of his emotions, slily said, "Had not you better take a postchaise, and go and see him ?" It was the shrewdness of the insinuation which made the story be circulated.-BOSWELL.

2 [See ante, v. i. p. 51.-En.]

6

humoured fellow, generous of his money and of his Piozzi, meat, and desirous of nothing but good, cheerful P. 123. society among people distinguished in some way—in any way, I think; for Rousseau and St. Austin would have been equally welcome to his table and to his kindness. The lady, however, was of another way of thinking: her first care was to preserve her husband's soul from corruption; her second to keep his estate entire for their children: and I owed my good reception in the family to the idea she had entertained, that I was fit company for Fitzherbert, whom I loved extremely. 'They dare not,' said she, swear, and take other conversationliberties, before you.' Mrs. Piozzi asked if her husband returned her regard. "He felt her influence too powerfully," replied Dr. Johnson: "no man will be fond of what forces him daily to feel himself inferior. She stood at the door of her paradise in Derbyshire, like the angel with the flaming sword, to keep the devil at a distance. But she was not immortal, poor dear! she died, and her husband felt at once afflicted and released." Mrs. Piozzi inquired if she was handsome. "She would have been handsome for a queen," replied the panegyrist: "her beauty had more in it of majesty than of attraction, more of the dignity of virtue than the vivacity of wit." The friend of this lady, Miss Boothby, succeeded her in the management of Mr. Fitzherbert's family, and in the esteem of Dr. Johnson; "Though," he said, "she pushed her piety to bigotry, her devotion to enthusiasm; that she somewhat disqualified herself for the duties of this life by her perpetual aspirations after the next:" such was, however, the purity of her mind, he said, and such the graces of her manner, that Lord Lyttelton and he used to strive for her preference with an emulation that occasioned hourly disgust, and

p. 124.

Piozzi, ended in lasting animosity. "You may see," said he to Mrs. Piozzi when the Poets' Lives were printed, “that dear Boothby is at my heart still. She would delight in that fellow Lyttelton's company in spite of all that I could do; and I cannot forgive even his memory the preference given by a mind like hers." Mrs. Piozzi heard Baretti say, that when this lady died, Dr. Johnson was almost distracted with his grief; and that the friends about him had much ado to calm the violence of his emotions 1.]

1

Tuesday, September 16, Dr. Johnson having mentioned to me the extraordinary size and price of some cattle reared by Dr. Taylor, I rode out with our host, surveyed his farm, and was shown one cow which he had sold for a hundred and twenty guineas, and another for which he had been offered a hundred and thirty. Taylor thus described to me his old schoolfellow and friend, Johnson: "He is a man of a very clear head, great power of words, and a very gay imagination; but there is no disputing with him. He will not hear you, and, having a louder voice than you, must roar you down."

In the afternoon I tried to get Dr. Johnson to like the Poems of Mr. Hamilton of Bangour, which I had brought with me: I had been much pleased with them at a very early age: the impression still remained on my mind; it was confirmed by the opinion of my friend the Honourable Andrew Erskine, himself both a good poet and a good critick, who thought Hamilton as true a poet as ever wrote, and that his not having fame was unaccountable. Johnson, upon repeated occasions, while I was at Ashbourne, talked slight

[See, on the subject of Miss Boothby, ante, vol. i. p. 51, and post, the note on the account of the Life of Lyttelton, sub 1781, where the attachment between her and Dr. Johnson is more fully explained. See also the general appendix, where a selection of the lady's letters and all Dr. Johnson's to her are given.-ED.] 2 [See ante, v. ii. p. 278.-ED.]

ingly of Hamilton. He said there was no power of thinking in his verses, nothing that strikes one, nothing better than what you generally find in magazines; and that the highest praise they deserved was, that they were very well for a gentleman to hand about among his friends. He said the imitation of Ne sit ancillæ tibi amor, &c. was too solemn: he read part of it at the beginning. He read the beautiful pathetick song, "Ah, the poor shepherd's mournful fate," and did not seem to give attention to what I had been used to think tender elegant strains, but laughed at the rhyme, in Scotch pronunciation, wishes and blushes, reading wushes-and there he stopped. He owned that the epitaph on Lord Newhall was pretty well done. He read the "Inscription in a Summer-house," and a little of the Imitations of Horace's Epistles; but said he found nothing to make him desire to read on. When I urged that there were some good poetical passages in the book, "Where," said he, "will you find so large a collection without some?" I thought the description of Winter might obtain his approbation;

"See Winter, from the frozen north,

Drives his iron chariot forth!

His grisly hand in icy chains

Fair Tweeda's silver flood constrains," &c.

He asked why an "iron chariot?" and said "icy chains" was an old image. I was struck with the uncertainty of taste, and somewhat sorry that a poet whom I had long read with fondness was not approved by Dr. Johnson. I comforted myself with thinking that the beauties were too delicate for his robust perceptions. Garrick maintained that he had not a taste for the finest productions of genius: but I was sensible, that when he took the trouble to analyse critically, he generally convinced us that he was right. In the evening the Reverend Mr. Seward, of

Lichfield, who was passing through Ashbourne in his way home, drank tea with us. Johnson described him thus: "Sir, his ambition is to be a fine talker; so he goes to Buxton, and such places, where he may find companies to listen to him. And, sir, he is a valetudinarian, one of those who are always mending themselves. I do not know a more disagreeable character than a valetudinarian, who thinks he may do any thing that is for his ease', and indulges himself in the grossest freedoms: sir, he brings himself to the state of a hog in a sty."

Dr. Taylor's nose happening to bleed, he said it was because he had omitted to have himself blooded four days after a quarter of a year's interval. Dr. Johnson, who was a great dabbler in physick, disapproved much of periodical bleeding. "For," said he,

you accustom yourself to an evacuation which nature cannot perform of herself, and therefore she cannot help you, should you from forgetfulness or any other cause omit it; so you may be suddenly suffocated. You may accustom yourself to other periodical evacuations, because, should you omit them, nature can supply the omission; but nature cannot open a vein to blood you 2." "I do not like to take an emetick," said Taylor, "for fear of breaking some small vessels." "Poh !" said Johnson, "if you have so many things that will break, you had better break your neck at once, and there's an end on't. You will break no small vessels" (blowing Piozzi, with high derision). [Though Dr. Johnson was commonly affected even to agony at the thoughts of a friend's dying, he troubled himself very little with the complaints they might make to him about ill health. "Dear doctor," said he one day to a common

p. 144.

2

[See ante, p. 366, 27th March, 1776.-ED.]

[Nature, however, may supply the evacuation by an hemorrhage.—KEARNEY.]