tion of juftice, that having been paid, he confidered them fo abfolutely the property of the purchaser, as to renounce all claim to them. He reckoned that he had written about forty fermons; but, except as to fome, knew not in what hands they were- I have,' faid he, been paid for them, and have no right to enquire about them*.

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I have now brought him to the year 1760, the fifty-first of his age. He had nothing to depend on for fubfiftence but the labour of his brain; and that apprehenfion, touching the duration of his rational powers, which throughout his life haunted him, increafed the terrors of approaching age. The acceffion of our prefent gracious fovereign to the throne, and the bounty exercifed by him towards Johnson, difpelled this gloomy profpect, and placed him in fuch a ftate of affluence as

engagement at their ordination, instead of being diligent in, are negligent of, fuch ftudies as help to the knowledge of the fcriptures, a perpetual apology for ignorance and idleness; for, as long as they chufe to say there are better difcourfes extant, or to be procured, than they are able to make, the excufe will hold them ; and accordingly many are not afhamed to claim the benefit of it, who have nothing to plead but what is an aggravation of their neglect; to which it may be added, that as it is an affumption of the merit of another, the practice is unjust, and, as its leads to a belief of that which is not true, in a high degree immoral.

Myfelf have heard, in the church of St. Margaret Westminfter, fundry fermons, which I and many others judged, by the fentiments, ftyle, and method, to be of his compofition; one in particular, Johnson being prefent. The next vifit I made him, I told him that I had feen him at St. Margaret's on the preceding Sunday, and that it was he who then preached. He heard me, and did not deny either affertion, which, if either had not been true, he certainly would have done. In his diary I find the following note: 77, Sept. 21. Concio pro Tayloro.'

his utmost industry would hardly ever have enabled him to arrive at. Lord Bute was the minifter at the time; and the perfon employed to notify to Johnson his majefty's intention to reward him for his literary labours with a penfion of 300l. a year, was his friend Mr. Murphy. Upon receiving the news, Johnson was in doubt what anfwer to return, being, perhaps, disturbed with the reflection, that whatever he might deferve from the public, he had very little claim to the favour of any of the defcendants of the house of Hanover; and defired that Mr. Murphy would give him till next day to deliberate upon a meffage fo unexpected. At the end thereof he fignified his willingness to accept it.

It was by Johnson and his friends thought fit, that he fhould return thanks for this diftinguishing mark of the royal favour, and that lord Bute, who may be supposed to have been inftrumental in procuring it, was the proper person to convey them. Accordingly, he waited on his lordship for the purpose, and, being admitted to him, teftified his sense of the obligation; but having done this, he thought he had done enough, and never after could be prevailed on to knock at his door.

He had now fuffered himself to be enrolled in the lift of penfioners, and was become obnoxious to the cenfures of thofe, who, looking upon a perpetual enmity to government and its minifters as a proof of public virtue, endeavoured to have it believed, that all favours difpenfed by the crown, even when meant as the rewards of merit, or the encouragement of learning, of ingenuity, or industry, were but the

wages

wages of iniquity. Johnfon, it is true, had laid himfelf open to reproach, by his interpretation of the word Penfion in his dictionary, written, it is evident, at a time when his political prejudices were ftrongeft, and he found himself in a predicament fimilar to that of Dr. Sherlock, who, at the revolution, was a nonjuror to king William, but, after deliberating on his refufal as a cafe of confcience, took the fide that made for his interest, but against his reputation. But who, except the Great Searcher of Hearts, can know, that. in the cafe of Sherlock or Johnfon, either made a facrifice of his confcience? Or, seeing that the grant of Johnson's penfion was confeffedly unconditional, and bound him neither to the renunciation of any of his political principles, nor the exercife of his pen in the defence of any fet of men or feries of measures, who will have the face to fay, that his acceptance of it was criminal, or that it was in the power of any one to pervert the integrity of a man, who, in the time of his neceffity, had, from fcruples of his own raifing, declined the offer of a valuable ecclefiaftical preferment, and thereby renounced an independent provifion for the whole of his life?

It is yet difficult, if not impoffible, to justify Johnfon, both in the interpretation given by him of the word Penfion, and in his becoming a penfioner: in one inftance or the other he was wrong, and either his difcretion or integrity must be given up: in the former, he feems, in fome of his actions, to have been wanting, in the latter never: not only charity, but reafon, therefore, directs us in the opinion we are to form of an act which has drawn cenfure on his conduct,

duct, and proves nothing more than that he was not equally wife at all times*.

The addition of three hundred pounds a year, to what Johnson was able to earn by the ordinary exercife of his talents, raifed him to a ftate of comparative affluence, and afforded him the means of affifting many whofe real or pretended wants had formerly excited his compaffion. He now practifed a rule which he often recommended to his friends, always to go abroad with a quantity of loose money to give to beggars, imitating therein, though I am confident without intending it, that good but weak man, old Mr. Whifton, whom I have seen diftributing, in the streets of London, money to beggars on each hand of him, till his pocket was nearly exhausted.

He had, early in his life, been a dabbler in phyfic, and laboured under fome fecret bodily infirmities that gave him occasion once to fay to me, that he knew not what it was to be totally free from pain. He now drew into a clofer intimacy with him a man, with whom he had been acquainted from the year 1746, one of the lowest practitioners in the art of

* Some of Johnson's friends, and all his enemies, would have been glad had he imitated the conduct of Andrew Marvell, who, in the reign of Cha. II. upon the offer of any poft under the government that would pleafe him, and of a thousand pounds in money, made him in a meflage from the king by the earl of Danby at a time when he wanted a guinea, refufed both. But Johnfon had no reafon to practice fuch felf-denial. Marvell, to be grateful, must have deferted his principles, and acquiefced in the measures of a corrupt court. Johnfon, on the contrary, was in no danger, during fuch a reign as is the prefent, of being required to make a facrifice of his confcience, and, being thus at liberty, he accepted the bounty of his fovereign,

healing

healing that ever fought a livelihood by it: him he confulted in all that related to his health, and made fo neceffary to him as hardly to be able to live without him.

The name of this person was Robert Levett. An account of him is given in the Gentleman's Magazine for February 1785: an earlier than that, I have now lying before me, in a letter from a person in the country to Johnfon, written in anfwer to one in which he had defired to be informed of fome particulars refpecting his friend Levett, then lately deceased. The fubftance of this information is as follows:

He was born at Kirk Ella, a parish about five miles diftant from Hull, and lived with his parents till about twenty years of age. He had acquired fome knowledge of the Latin language, and had a propenfity to learning, which his parents not being able to gratify, he went to live as a fhopman with a woollendraper at Hull with him he ftayed two years, during which time he learned from a neighbour of his master fomewhat of the practice of phyfic: at the end thereof he came to London, with a view poffibly to improve himself in that profeffion; but by fome ftrange accident was led to purfue another courfe, and became fteward or fome other upper fervant to the then lord Cardigan, [or Cadogan] and having faved fome money, he took a resolution to travel, and visited France and Italy for the purpofe, as his letters mention, of gaining experience in phyfic, and, returning to London with a valuable library which he had collected abroad, placed one of his brothers apprentice to a mathematical-inftrument maker, and provided for the education of another. After this he went to Paris,

and