grievously of it in his letters to his friend, | Mr. Hector, who was now settled as a surgeon at Birmingham. The letters are lost; but Mr. Hector recollects his writing "that the poet had described the dull sameness of his existence in these words, Vitam continet una dies' (one day contains the whole of my life); that it was unvaried as the note of the cuckow; and that he did not know whether it was more disagreeable for him to teach, or the boys to learn, the grammar rules." His general aversion to this painful drudgery was greatly enhanced by a disagreement between him and Sir Wolstan Dixie, the patron of the school, in whose house, I have been told, he officiated as a kind of domestic chaplain, so far, at least, as to say grace at table, but was treated with what he represented as intolerable harshness; and, after suffering for a few months such complicated misery, he relinquished a situation which all his life afterwards he recollected with the strongest aversion, and even a degree of horrour.2 [Mr. Malone, in a note on this passage, states that he had read a letter of Johnson's to a friend, dated 27th July, 1732, saying that he had then recently left Sir Wolstan Dixie's house, and that he had some hopes of succeeding, either as master or usher, in the school of Ashbourn. If Mr. Malone be correct in the date of this letter, and Mr. Boswell be also right in placing the extract from the diary under the year 1732, Johnson's sojourn at Bosworth could have been not more than ten days, a time too short to be characterized as "a period of complicated misery," and to be remembered during a long life "with the strongest aversion and horror." It must also be observed, that according to the statement of Messrs. Boswell and Malone compared with the College books, Johnson's life, from December, 1729, to the beginning of 1733, is wholly unaccounted for, except the ten days supposed to have been so lamentably spent at Bosworth. The only probable solution of these difficulties is, that the walk to Bosworth on the 16th July, 1732, was not his first appearance there; but that having been called to Lichfield, to receive his share of his father's property, which, we have seen, p. 27, that he did on the 15th July, he returned to Bosworth on the 16th, perhaps for the purpose of making arrangements for finally leaving it, which he did within ten days. It seems very extraordinary, that the laborious diligence, and the lively curiosity of Hawkins, Boswell, Murphy, and Malone, were able to discover so little of the history of Johnson's life from December, 1729, to his marriage in July, 1736, and that what they have told should be liable to so much doubt. It may be inferred, that it was a period to which Johnson looked back with little satisfaction, and of which he did not love to talk; though it cannot be doubted that, during these five or six important years, he must have collected a large portion of that vast stock of information, with which he afterwards surprised and delighted the world.-ED.] 2 [There seems reason to suspect that Sir Wol But it is probable that at this period, whatever uneasiness he may have endured, he laid the foundation of much future eminence by application to his studies. Being now again totally unoccupied, he was invited by Mr. Hector to pass some time with him at Birmingham, as his guest, at the house of Mr. Warren, with whom Mr. Hector lodged and boarded. Mr. Warren was the first established bookseller in Birmingham, and was very attentive to Johnson, who he soon found could be of much service to him in his trade, by his knowledge of literature; and he even obtained the assistance of his pen in furnishing some numbers of a periodical Essay, printed in the newspaper of which Warren was proprietor. After very diligent inquiry, I have not been able to recover those early specimens of that particular mode of writing by which Johnson afterwards so greatly distinguished himself. He continued to live as Mr. Hector's guest for about six months, and then hired findlodgings in another part of the town 3, ing himself as well situated at Birmingham as he supposed he could be any where, while he had no settled plan of life, and He very scanty means of subsistence. made some valuable acquaintances there, amongst whom were Mr. Porter, a mercer, whose widow he afterwards married, and Mr. Taylor, who, by his ingenuity in mechanical inventions and his success in trade acquired an immense fortune. But the comfort of being near Mr. Hector, his old schoolfellow and intimate friend, was Johnson's chief inducement to continue here. In what manner he employed his pen at this period, or whether he derived from it able to ascertain. He probably got a little any pecuniary advantage, I have not been money from Mr. Warren; and we are certain, that he executed here one piece of literary labour, of which Mr. Hector has favoured me with a minute account. Having mentioned that he had read at Pembroke College a Voyage to Abyssinia, by Lobo (a Portuguese Jesuit), and that he thought an Abridgement and translation of it from the French into English might be an useful and profitable publication, Mr. Warren and Mr. Hector joined in urging him to undertake it. He accordingly agreed; and the book not being to be found in Birming stan Dixie's temper was, to say the least of it irregular and violent; but it must also be recollected, that Johnson's own mind had recently been in a state of morbid disturbance.-ED.] 3 Sir John Hawkins states, from one of Johnson's diaries, that he lodged, in June, 1733, in Birmingham, at the house of a person named Jervis, probably a relation of Mrs. Porter, whom he afterwards married, and whose maiden name was Jervis.-MALONE. lives." once the pleasure of examining it with Mr. Edmund Burke, who confirmed me in this opinion by his superiour critical sagacity, and was, I remember, much delighted with the following specimen: ham, he borrowed it of Pembroke College. | cala, which cost two of our fathers their A part of the work being very soon done, one Osborn, who was Mr. Warren's print- Every one acquainted with Johnson's er, was set to work with what was ready, manner will be sensible that there is nothand Johnson engaged to supply the pressing of it here; but that this sentence might with copy as it should be wanted; but his have been composed by any other man. constitutional indolence soon prevailed, and But, in the Preface, the Johnsonian style the work was at a stand. Mr. Hector, begins to appear; and though use had not who knew that a motive of humanity yet taught his wing a permanent and equawould be the most prevailing argument with ble flight, there are parts of it which exhis friend, went to Johnson, and represent-hibit his best manner in full vigour. I had ed to him that the printer could have no other employment till this undertaking was finished, and that the poor man and his family were suffering. Johnson, upon this, exerted the powers of his mind, though his body was relaxed. He lay in bed with the book, which was a quarto, before him, and dictated while Hector wrote. Mr. Hector carried the sheets to the press, and corrected almost all the proof sheets, very few of which were even seen by Johnson. In this manner, with the aid of Mr. Hector's active friendship, the book was completed, and was published in 1735, with London upon the title-page, though it was in reality printed at Birmingham, a device too common with provincial publishers. For this work he had from Mr. Warren only the sum of five guineas. This being the first prose work of Johnson, it is a curious object of inquiry how much may be traced in it of that style which marks his subsequent writings with such peculiar excellence with so happy an union of force, vivacity, and perspicuity. I have perused the book with this view, and have found that here, as I believe in every other translation, there is in the work itself no vestige of the translator's own style; for the language of translation being adapted to the thoughts of another person, insensibly follows their cast, and, as it were, runs into a mould that is ready prepared. Thus, for instance, taking the first sentence that occurs at the opening of the book, p. 4: "The Portuguese traveller, contrary to the general vein of his countrymen, has amused his reader with no romantick absurdity, or incredible fictions; whatever he relates, whether true or not, is at least probable; and he who tells nothing exceeding the bounds of probability, has a right to demand that they should believe him who cannot contradict him. "He appears, by his modest and unaffected narration, to have described things as he saw them, to have copied nature from the life, and to have consulted his senses, not his imagination. He meets with no basilisks that destroy with their eyes, his crocodiles devour their prey without tears, and his cataracts fall from the rocks without deafening the neighbouring inhabitants. "The reader will here find no regions cursed with irremediable barrenness, or blest with spontaneous fecundity; no perpetual gloom, or unceasing sunshine; nor are the nations here described, either devoid of all sense of humanity, or consummate in all private or social virtues. Here are no Hottentots without religious policy or articulate language; no Chinese perfectly polite and completely skilled in all sciences; he will discover, what will always be discovered by a diligent and impartial inquirer, that wherever human nature is to be found, there is a mixture of vice and virtue, a contest of "I lived here above a year, and complet-passion and reason; and that the Creator ed my studies in divinity; in which time some letters were received from the fathers of Ethiopia, with an account that Sultan Segned, Emperour of Abyssinia, was converted to the church of Rome; that many of his subjects had followed his example, and that there was a great want of missionaries to improve these prosperous beginnings. Every body was very desirous of seconding the zeal of our fathers, and of sending them the assistance they requested; to which we were the more encouraged, because the emperour's letter informed our provincial that we might easily enter his dominions by the way of Dancala; but, unhappily, the secretary wrote Geila for Dan doth not appear partial in his distributions, but has balanced, in most countries, their particular inconveniences by particular favours." Here we have an early example of that brilliant and energetick expression, which, upon innumerable occasions in his subsequent life, justly impressed the world with the highest admiration. Nor can any one, conversant with the writings of Johnson, fail to discern his hand in this passage of the Dedication to John Warren, Esq. of Pembrokeshire, though it is ascribed to Warren the bookseller. "A generous and elevated mind is distin guished by nothing more certainly than an | mentioned that "subscriptions are taken in eminent degree of curiosity1; nor is that cu- by the Editor, or N. Johnson, bookseller, riosity ever more agreeably or usefully em- of Lichfield." Notwithstanding the merit ployed, than in examining the laws and of Johnson, and the cheap price at which customs of foreign nations. I hope, there- this book was offered, there were not subfore, the present I now presume to make, scribers enough to ensure a sufficient sale; will not be thought improper; which, how-so the work never appeared, and, probably, ever, it is not my business as a dedicator to never was executed. commend, nor as a bookseller to depreciate." It is reasonable to suppose, that his having been thus accidentally led to a particular study of the history and manners of Abyssinia, was the remote occasion of his writ-man's Magazine: ing, many years afterwards, his admirable philosophical tale, the principal scene of which is laid in that country. Johnson returned to Lichfield early in 1734, and in August that year he made an attempt to procure some little subsistence by his pen; for he published proposals for printing by subscription the Latin Poems of Politian 2: Angeli Politiani Poemata Latina, quibus, Notas cum historia Latina poeseos à Petrarchæ ævo ad Politiani tempora deductà, et vitâ Politiani fusius quam antehac enarrata, addidit SAM. JOHNSON 3." It appears that his brother Nathanael had taken up his father's trade4; for it is 1 See Rambler, No. 103. [Curiosity is the thirst of the soul, &c.-ED.] 2 May we not trace a fanciful similarity between Politian and Johnson? Huetius, speaking of Paulus Pelissonius Fontanerius, says -in quo Natura, ut olim in Angelo Politiano, deformitatem oris excellentis ingenii præstantia compensavit.' -Comment. de reb. ad eum pertin. Edit. Amstel. 1718. p. 200.-BOSWELL. [In this learned masquerade of Paulus Pelissonius Fontanerius, we have some difficulty in detecting Madame de Sevigné's friend, M. Pelisson, of whom another of that lady's friends, M. de Guilleragues, used the phrase, which has since grown into a proverb, "qu'il abusait de la permission qu'ont les hommes d'etre laids."-See Madame de Sevigne's letter, 5th Jan. 1674.-Huet, Bishop of Avranche, wrote Memoirs of his own time, in Latin, from which Boswell has extracted this scrap of pedantry.-ED.] 3 The book was to contain more than thirty sheets; the price to be two shillings and sixpence at the time of subscribing, and two shillings and sixpence at the delivery of a perfect book in quires.-BoswELL. [Nathanael kept the shop as long as he lived, as did his mother, after him, till her death, though on somewhat, it is to be presumed, of a lowered scale. Miss Seward, who, in such a matter as this, may perhaps be trusted, tells us that Miss Lucy Porter, from the age of twenty to her fortieth year (when she was raised to a state of competency by the death of her eldest brother), "had boarded in Lichfield with Dr Johnson's mother, who still kept that little bookseller's shop by which her husband had supplied the scanty means of subsistence; meantime Lucy Porter kept the best com We find him again this year at Birmingham, and there is preserved the following letter from him to Mr. Edward Cave5, the original compiler and editor of the Gentle "TO MR. CAVE. "Nov. 25, 1734 "SIR,-As you appear no less sensible than your readers of the defects of your poetical article, you will not be displeased, if, in order to the improvement of it, I communicate to you the sentiments of a person, who will undertake, on reasonable terms, sometimes to fill a column. "His opinion is, that the publick would not give you a bad reception, if, beside the current wit of the month, which a critical examination would generally reduce to a narrow compass, you admitted not only poems, inscriptions, &c. never printed before, which he will sometimes supply you with; but likewise short literary dissertations in Latin or English, critical remarks on authours ancient or modern, forgotten poems that deserve revival, or loose pieces, like Floyer's 6, worth preserving. By this method, your literary article, for so it might be called, will, he thinks, be better recommended to the publick than by low jests, of either party. awkward buffoonery, or the dull scurrilities "If such a correspondence will be agree pany in our little city, but would make no engagement on market-days, lest Granny, as she called Mrs. Johnson, should catch cold by serving in the shop. There Lucy Porter took her place, standing behind the counter, nor thought it a disgrace to thank a poor person who purchased from her a penny battledoor."-Lett. 1. 117.-ED.] 5 Miss Cave, the grand-niece of Mr. Edw. Cave, has obligingly shown me the originals of this and the other letters of Dr. Johnson to him, which were first published in the Gentleman's Magazine, with notes by Mr. John Nichols, the worthy and indefatigable editor of that valuable miscellany, signed N.; some of which I shall occasionally transcribe in the course of this work.-BOSWELL. [The present editor has felt justified by this and many other testimonies to the accuracy of Mr. Nichols, to admit into his notes and even into the text the information supplied by him.—En.] Sir John Floyer's Treatise on Cold Baths. Gent. Mag. 1734, p. 197. 7 [Is the use of will and shall in this sentence quite grammatical? Dr. Johnson seems sometimes to have used the word shall where it is now able to you, be pleased to inform me in two posts, what the conditions are on which you shall expect it. Your late of fer gives me no reason to distrust your generosity. If you engage in any literary projects besides this paper, I have other designs to impart, if I could be secure from having others reap the advantage of what I should hint. "Your letter by being directed to S. Smith, to be left at the Castle in Birmingham, Warwickshire, will reach "Your humble servant." Mr. Cave has put a note on this letter, "Answered Dec. 2." But whether any thing was done in consequence of it we are not informed 2. ED. [In the year 1735, Mr. Walmesley's kindness endeavoured to procure him the mastership of the grammar school at Solihull in Warwickshire: this and the cause of failure appear by the following curious and characteristical letter, addressed to Mr. Walmesley, and preserved in the records of Pembroke College: "Solihull ye 30 August, 1735. "SIR, I was favoured with yours of ye 18th inst. in due time, but deferred answering it til now, it takeing up some time to informe the ffofees [of the school] of the contents thereof; and before they would return an Answer, desired some more customary to employ may: for instance, speaking of one dead, he said, "I trust he shall find mercy;"-and again, in his Prayers and Meditations" (see extract, post, p. 35), Dr. Hall (who has examined the original in the Pembroke MSS.), informs me, that "no rational wish is now left but that we may meet at last," &c. was at first written that we shall meet, and afterwards altered to may. It may seem presumptuous to differ from Dr. Johnson on a grammatical point, but the norma loquendi of the present day would hardly tolerate the use of the word shall in any of the foregoing cases.-ED.] A prize of fifty pounds for the best poem on "Life, Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell." See Gentleman's Magazine, vol. iv. p. 560.NICHOLS. [A second prize of forty pounds, and some others of inferior value, were offered by Cave, at subsequent periods, for poems on similar subjects. It seems extraordinary that Johnson, whose wants were urgent, and who was glad, so soon after, to sell his LONDON for ten pounds, did not endeavour to obtain Cave's prize. Did his dignity of mind reject such a Mecenas as Cave? or did he make the attempt and afterwards conceal his failure in prudential silence?-ED.] 2 [Sir J. Hawkins, who gives us to understand that he had seen Cave's answer, says, that "he therein accepted the services of Johnson, and retained him as a correspondent and contributor to his Magazine" (p. 29), but his subsequent correspondence with Cave seems to negative this early connexion.-ED.] time to make enquiry of ye caracter of Mr. Johnson, who all agree that he is an excellent scholar, and upon that account deserves much better than to be schoolmaster of Solihull. But then he has the caracter of being a very haughty ill-natured gent, and yt he has such a way of distorting his fface (wh though he ca'nt help) ye gent. think it may affect some young ladds; for these two reasons he is not approved on, ye late master Mr. Crompton's huffing the ffofees being stil in their memory. However we are all exstreamly obliged to you for thinking of us, and for proposeing so good a schollar, but more especially is, dear sir, your very humble servant, HENRY GRESWOLD." ED. Nichols. It was probably prior to this that a more humble attempt to obtain the situation of assistant in Mr. Budworth's school, at Brewood, had also failed, and for the same reasons. Mr. Budworth was certainly no stranger to the learning and abilities of Johnson, as he more than once lamented his having been under the necessity of declining the engagement from an apprehension that the paralytic affection under which Johnson laboured through life might become the object of imitation or ridicule amongst his pupils. This anecdote Captain Budworth, his grandson, confirmed to Mr. Nichols.] Johnson had, from his early youth, been sensible to the influence of female charms. When at Stourbridge school, he was much enamoured of Olivia Lloyd, a young quaker, to whom he wrote a copy of verses, which I have not been able to recover3; but with what facility and elegance he could warble the amorous lay will appear from the following lines which he wrote for his friend Mr. Edmund Hector. Verses to a Lady, on receiving from her a 3 He also wrote some amatory verses, before he left Staffordshire, which our author appears not to have seen. They were addressed "to Miss Hickman, playing on the spinet." At the back of this early poetical effusion, of which the original copy, in Johnson's handwriting, was obligingly communicated to me [as it also was to the present editor] by Mr. John Taylor, is the following attestation: "Written by the late Dr. Samuel Johnson, on my mother, then Miss Hickman, playing on the Spinet. J. Turton." Dr. Turton, the physician, writer of this certificate, who died in April, 1806, in his 71st year, was born in 1735. The verses in question, therefore, which have been printed in some late editions of Johnson's poems, must have been written before that year.-Miss Hickman, is believed, was a lady of Staffordshire.-MALONE. The myrtle, ensign of supreme command, 1 Mrs. Piozzi gives the following account of this little composition from Dr. Johnson's own relation to her, on her inquiring whether it was rightly attributed to him." 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 Šit 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."-Anecdotes, p. 34. In my first edition I was induced to doubt the authenticity of this account, by the following circumstantial statement in a letter to me from Miss Seward of Lichfield:-" I know those verses were addressed to Lucy Porter, when he was enamoured of her in his boyish days, two or three years before he had seen her mother, his future wife. He wrote them at my grandfather's [Mr. Hunter, the schoolmaster], and gave them to Lucy in the presence of my mother, to whom he showed them on the instant. She used to repeat them to me, when I asked her for the Verses Dr. Johnson gave her on a Sprig of Myrtle, which he had stolen or begged from her bosom. We all know honest Lucy Porter to have been incapable of the mean vanity of applying to herself a compliment not intended for her." Such was this lady's statement, which I make no doubt she supposed to be correct; but it shows how dangerous it is to trust too implicitly to traditional testimony and ingenious inference; for Mr. Hector has lately assured me that Mrs. Piozzi's account is in this instance accurate, and that he was the person [as his name Edmund additionally proves] for whom Johnson wrote those verses, which have been erroneously ascribed to Mr. Hammond. I am obliged in so many instances to notice Mrs. Piozzi's incorrectness of relation, that I gladly seize this opportunity of acknowledging, that however often, she is not always inaccurate. The authour having been drawn into a controversy with Miss Anna Seward, in consequence of the preceding statement (which may be found in "the Gentleman's Magazine," vol. lxiii. and Ixiv.), received the following letter from Mr. Hector, on the subject: "DEAR SIR,-I am sorry to see you are engaged in altercation with a lady, who seems unwilling to be convinced of her errors. Surely it would be more ingenuous to acknowledge than to persevere. "Lately, in looking over some papers I meant to burn, I found the original manuscript of the His juvenile attachments to the fair sex were, however, very transient: and it is certain, that he formed no criminal connexion whatsoever. Mr. Hector, who lived with him in his younger days in the utmost intimacy and social freedom, has assured me, that even at that ardent season his conduct was strictly virtuous in that respect; and that though he loved to exhilaintoxicated but once. rate himself with wine, he never knew him In a man whom religious education has secured from licentious indulgences, the passion of love, when once it has seized him, is exceedingly strong; being unimpaired by dissipation, and totally concentrated in one object. This was experienced by Johnson, when he became the fervent admirer of Mrs. Porter, after her first husband's death. Miss Porter told me, that when he was first introduced to her mother, his appearance was very forbidding; he mense structure of bones was hideously was then lean and lank, so that his imstriking to the eye, and the scars of the scrofula were deeply visible. He also wore his hair, which was straight and stiff, and separated behind; and he often had, seemingly, convulsive starts and odd gesticulations, which tended to excite at once surprise and ridicule. Mrs. Porter was SO myrtle, with the date on it, 1731, which I have enclosed. "The true history (which I could swear to) is as follows: Mr. Morgan Graves, the elder brother of a worthy clergyman near Bath, with whom I was acquainted, waited upon a lady in this neighbourhood, who at parting presented him the branch. He showed it me, and wished much to return the compliment in verse. I applied to Johnson, who was with me, and in about half an hour dictated the verses which I sent to my friend. "I most solemnly declare, at that time, Johnson was an entire stranger to the Porter family; and it was almost two years after that I introduced him to the acquaintance of Porter, whom I bought my clothes of. "If you intend to convince this obstinate woman, and to exhibit to the publick the truth of your narrative, you are at liberty to make what use you please of this statement. "I hope you will pardon me for taking up so much of your time. Wishing you multos et felices annos, I shall subscribe myself your obliged humble servant, E. HECTOR.-Birmingham, Jan. 9th, 1794."-BOSWELL. [Of the supposed attachment of Dr. Johnson to the daughter of his wife there is no evidence whatsoever, but the assertion of Miss Seward, whose anecdotes have turned out to be in almost every instance worse than nothing; and, in this case, if it were worth while to seek for any evidence beyond Mr. Hector's, the dates would disprove Miss Seward's statement, which it is but too evident that she made with the view of disparaging and ridiculing Dr. Johnson.-ED.] |