Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D Part 3

"Three poets in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn; The first in loftiness of thought surpa.s.sed, The next in majesty; in both the last.

The force of Nature could no further go, To make a third she joined the former two."

One evening in the oratorio season of the year 1771 Mr. Johnson went with me to Covent Garden Theatre, and though he was for the most part an exceedingly bad playhouse companion, as his person drew people's eyes upon the box, and the loudness of his voice made it difficult for me to hear anybody but himself, he sat surprisingly quiet, and I flattered myself that he was listening to the music. When we were got home, however, he repeated these verses, which he said he had made at the oratorio, and he bade me translate them:

IN THEATRO.

"Tertii verso quater orbe l.u.s.tri Quid theatrales tibi crispe pompae!

Quam decet canos male literatos Sera voluptas!

"Tene mulceri fidibus canoris?

Tene cantorum modulis stupere?

Tene per pictas oculo elegante Currere formas?

"Inter equales sine felle liber, Codices veri studiosus inter Rectius vives, sua quisque carpat Gaudia gratus.

"Lusibus gaudet puer otiosis Luxus oblectat juvenem theatri, At seni fluxo sapienter uti Tempore restat."

I gave him the following lines in imitation, which he liked well enough, I think:

"When threescore years have chilled thee quite, Still can theatric scenes delight?

Ill suits this place with learned wight, May Bates or Coulson cry.

"The scholar's pride can Brent disarm?

His heart can soft Guadagni warm?

Or scenes with sweet delusion charm The climacteric eye?

"The social club, the lonely tower, Far better suit thy midnight hour; Let each according to his power In worth or wisdom shine!

"And while play pleases idle boys, And wanton mirth fond youth employs, To fix the soul, and free from toys, That useful task be thine."

The copy of verses in Latin hexameters, as well as I remember, which he wrote to Dr. Lawrence, I forgot to keep a copy of; and he obliged me to resign his translation of the song beginning, "Busy, curious, thirsty fly," for him to give Mr. Langton, with a promise _not_ to retain a copy.

I concluded he knew why, so never inquired the reason. He had the greatest possible value for Mr. Langton, of Langton Hall, Lincoln, of whose virtue and learning he delighted to talk in very exalted terms; and poor Dr. Lawrence had long been his friend and confident. The conversation I saw them hold together in Ess.e.x Street one day, in the year 1781 or 1782, was a melancholy one, and made a singular impression on my mind. He was himself exceedingly ill, and I accompanied him thither for advice. The physician was, however, in some respects more to be pitied than the patient. Johnson was panting under an asthma and dropsy, but Lawrence had been brought home that very morning struck with the palsy, from which he had, two hours before we came, strove to awaken himself by blisters. They were both deaf, and scarce able to speak besides: one from difficulty of breathing, the other from paralytic debility. To give and receive medical counsel, therefore, they fairly sat down on each side a table in the doctor's gloomy apartment, adorned with skeletons, preserved monsters, etc., and agreed to write Latin billets to each other. Such a scene did I never see. "You," said Johnson, "are timide and gelide," finding that his friend had prescribed palliative, not drastic, remedies. "It is not _me_," replies poor Lawrence, in an interrupted voice, "'tis nature that is gelide and timide." In fact, he lived but few months after, I believe, and retained his faculties still a shorter time. He was a man of strict piety and profound learning, but little skilled in the knowledge of life or manners, and died without having ever enjoyed the reputation he so justly deserved.

Mr. Johnson's health had been always extremely bad since I first knew him, and his over-anxious care to retain without blemish the perfect sanity of his mind contributed much to disturb it. He had studied medicine diligently in all its branches, but had given particular attention to the diseases of the imagination, which he watched in himself with a solicitude destructive of his own peace, and intolerable to those he trusted. Dr. Lawrence told him one day that if he would come and beat him once a week he would bear it, but to hear his complaints was more than _man_ could support. 'Twas therefore that he tried, I suppose, and in eighteen years contrived to weary the patience of a _woman_. When Mr.

Johnson felt his fancy, or fancied he felt it, disordered, his constant recurrence was to the study of arithmetic, and one day that he was totally confined to his chamber, and I inquired what he had been doing to divert himself, he showed me a calculation which I could scarce be made to understand, so vast was the plan of it, and so very intricate were the figures: no other, indeed, than that the national debt, computing it at one hundred and eighty millions sterling, would, if converted into silver, serve to make a meridian of that metal, I forgot how broad, for the globe of the whole earth, the real _globe_. On a similar occasion I asked him, knowing what subject he would like best to talk upon, how his opinion stood towards the question between Paschal and Soame Jennings about number and numeration? as the French philosopher observes that infinity, though on all sides astonishing, appears most so when the idea is connected with the idea of number; for the notion of infinite number--and infinite number we know there is--stretches one's capacity still more than the idea of infinite s.p.a.ce. "Such a notion, indeed,"

adds he, "can scarcely find room in the human mind." Our English author, on the other hand, exclaims, let no man give himself leave to talk about infinite number, for infinite number is a contradiction in terms; whatever is once numbered, we all see, cannot be infinite. "I think,"

said Mr. Johnson, after a pause, "we must settle the matter thus: numeration is certainly infinite, for eternity might be employed in adding unit to unit; but every number is in itself finite, as the possibility of doubling it easily proves; besides, stop at what point you will, you find yourself as far from infinitude as ever." These pa.s.sages I wrote down as soon as I had heard them, and repent that I did not take the same method with a dissertation he made one other day that he was very ill, concerning the peculiar properties of the number sixteen, which I afterwards tried, but in vain, to make him repeat.

As ethics or figures, or metaphysical reasoning, was the sort of talk he most delighted in, so no kind of conversation pleased him less, I think, than when the subject was historical fact or general polity. "What shall we learn from _that_ stuff?" said he. "Let us not fancy, like Swift, that we are exalting a woman's character by telling how she

"'Could name the ancient heroes round, Explain for what they were renowned,' etc."

I must not, however, lead my readers to suppose that he meant to reserve such talk for men's company as a proof of pre-eminence. "He never," as he expressed it, "desired to hear of the Punic War while he lived; such conversation was lost time," he said, "and carried one away from common life, leaving no ideas behind which could serve _living wight_ as warning or direction."

"How I should act is not the case, But how would Brutus in my place."

"And now," cries Mr. Johnson, laughing with obstreperous violence, "if these two foolish lines can be equalled in folly, except by the two succeeding ones--show them me."

I asked him once concerning the conversation powers of a gentleman with whom I was myself unacquainted. "He talked to me at club one day,"

replies our Doctor, "concerning Catiline's conspiracy, so I withdrew my attention, and thought about Tom Thumb."

Modern politics fared no better. I was one time extolling the character of a statesman, and expatiating on the skill required to direct the different currents, reconcile the jarring interests, etc. "Thus,"

replies he, "a mill is a complicated piece of mechanism enough, but the water is no part of the workmanship." On another occasion, when some one lamented the weakness of a then present minister, and complained that he was dull and tardy, and knew little of affairs: "You may as well complain, sir," says Johnson, "that the accounts of time are kept by the clock; for he certainly does stand still upon the stair-head--and we all know that he is no great chronologer." In the year 1777, or thereabouts, when all the talk was of an invasion, he said most pathetically one afternoon, "Alas! alas! how this unmeaning stuff spoils all my comfort in my friends' conversation! Will the people have done with it; and shall I never hear a sentence again without the _French_ in it? Here is no invasion coming, and you _know_ there is none. Let the vexatious and frivolous talk alone, or suffer it at least to teach you _one_ truth; and learn by this perpetual echo of even unapprehended distress how historians magnify events expected or calamities endured; when you know they are at this very moment collecting all the big words they can find, in which to describe a consternation never felt, for a misfortune which never happened. Among all your lamentations, who eats the less--who sleeps the worse, for one general's ill-success, or another's capitulation? _Oh_, _pray_ let us hear no more of it!" No man, however, was more zealously attached to his party; he not only loved a Tory himself, but he loved a man the better if he heard he hated a Whig. "Dear Bathurst," said he to me one day, "was a man to my very heart's content: he hated a fool, and he hated a rogue, and he hated a _Whig_; he was a very good _hater_."

Some one mentioned a gentleman of that party for having behaved oddly on an occasion where faction was not concerned: "Is he not a citizen of London, a native of North America, and a Whig?" says Johnson. "Let him be absurd, I beg you of you; when a monkey is _too_ like a man, it shocks one."

Severity towards the poor was, in Dr. Johnson's opinion (as is visible in his "Life of Addison" particularly), an undoubted and constant attendant or consequence upon Whiggism; and he was not contented with giving them relief, he wished to add also indulgence. He loved the poor as I never yet saw any one else do, with an earnest desire to make them happy. "What signifies," says some one, "giving halfpence to common beggars? they only lay it out in gin or tobacco." "And why should they be denied such sweeteners of their existence?" says Johnson; "it is surely very savage to refuse them every possible avenue to pleasure, reckoned too coa.r.s.e for our own acceptance. Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding; yet for the poor we delight in stripping it still barer, and are not ashamed to show even visible displeasure if ever the bitter taste is taken from their mouths." In consequence of these principles he nursed whole nests of people in his house, where the lame, the blind, the sick, and the sorrowful found a sure retreat from all the evils whence his little income could secure them: and commonly spending the middle of the week at our house, he kept his numerous family in Fleet Street upon a settled allowance; but returned to them every Sat.u.r.day, to give them three good dinners, and his company, before he came back to us on the Monday night--treating them with the same, or perhaps more ceremonious civility than he would have done by as many people of fashion--making the Holy Scriptures thus the rule of his conduct, and only expecting salvation as he was able to obey its precepts.

While Dr. Johnson possessed, however, the strongest compa.s.sion for poverty or illness, he did not even pretend to feel for those who lamented the loss of a child, a parent, or a friend. "These are the distresses of sentiment," he would reply, "which a man who is really to be pitied has no leisure to feel. The sight of people who want food and raiment is so common in great cities, that a surly fellow like me has no compa.s.sion to spare for wounds given only to vanity or softness." No man, therefore, who smarted from the ingrat.i.tude of his friends, found any sympathy from our philosopher. "Let him do good on higher motives next time," would be the answer; "he will then be sure of his reward." It is easy to observe that the justice of such sentences made them offensive; but we must be careful how we condemn a man for saying what we know to be true, only because it _is_ so. I hope that the reason our hearts rebelled a little against his severity was chiefly because it came from a living mouth. Books were invented to take off the odium of immediate superiority, and soften the rigour of duties prescribed by the teachers and censors of human kind--setting at least those who are acknowledged wiser than ourselves at a distance. When we recollect, however, that for this very reason _they_ are seldom consulted and little obeyed, how much cause shall his contemporaries have to rejoice that their living Johnson forced them to feel there proofs due to vice and folly, while Seneca and Tillotson were no longer able to make impression--except on our shelves! Few things, indeed, which pa.s.s well enough with others would do with him: he had been a great reader of Mandeville, and was ever on the watch to spy out those stains of original corruption so easily discovered by a penetrating observer even in the purest minds. I mentioned an event, which if it had happened would greatly have injured Mr. Thrale and his family--"and then, dear sir,"

said I, "how sorry you would have been!" "I _hope_," replied he, after a long pause, "I should have been _very_ sorry; but remember Rochefoucault's maxim."

"I would rather," answered I, "remember Prior's verses, and ask--

'What need of books these truths to tell, Which folks perceive that cannot spell?

And must we spectacles apply, To see what hurts our naked eye?'

Will _anybody's_ mind bear this eternal microscope that you place upon your own so?" "I never," replied he, "saw one that _would_, except that of my dear Miss Reynolds--and hers is very near to purity itself." Of slighter evils, and friends more distant than our own household, he spoke less cautiously. An acquaintance lost the almost certain hope of a good estate that had been long expected. "Such a one will grieve," said I, "at her friend's disappointment." "She will suffer as much, perhaps,"

said he, "as your horse did when your cow miscarried." I professed myself sincerely grieved when acc.u.mulated distresses crushed Sir George Colebrook's family; and I was so. "Your own prosperity," said he, "may possibly have so far increased the natural tenderness of your heart, that for aught I know you _may_ be a _little sorry_; but it is sufficient for a plain man if he does not laugh when he sees a fine new house tumble down all on a sudden, and a snug cottage stand by ready to receive the owner, whose birth ent.i.tled him to nothing better, and whose limbs are left him to go to work again with."

I tried to tell him in jest that his morality was easily contented, and when I have said something as if the wickedness of the world gave me concern, he would cry out aloud against canting, and protest that he thought there was very little gross wickedness in the world, and still less of extraordinary virtue. Nothing, indeed, more surely disgusted Dr.

Johnson than hyperbole; he loved not to be told of sallies of excellence, which he said were seldom valuable, and seldom true. "Heroic virtues,"

said he, "are the bons mots of life; they do not appear often, and when they do appear are too much prized, I think, like the aloe-tree, which shoots and flowers once in a hundred years. But life is made up of little things; and that character is the best which does little but repeated acts of beneficence; as that conversation is the best which consists in elegant and pleasing thoughts expressed in natural and pleasing terms. With regard to my own notions of moral virtue,"

continued he, "I hope I have not lost my sensibility of wrong; but I hope, likewise, that I have lived long enough in the world to prevent me from expecting to find any action of which both the original motive and all the parts were good."

The piety of Dr. Johnson was exemplary and edifying; he was punctiliously exact to perform every public duty enjoined by the Church, and his spirit of devotion had an energy that affected all who ever saw him pray in private. The coldest and most languid hearer of the Word must have felt themselves animated by his manner of reading the Holy Scriptures; and to pray by his sick-bed required strength of body as well as of mind, so vehement were his manners, and his tones of voice so pathetic. I have many times made it my request to Heaven that I might be spared the sight of his death; and I was spared it.

Mr. Johnson, though in general a gross feeder, kept fast in Lent, particularly the Holy Week, with a rigour very dangerous to his general health; but though he had left off wine (for religious motives, as I always believed, though he did not own it), yet he did not hold the commutation of offences by voluntary penance, or encourage others to practise severity upon themselves. He even once said "that he thought it an error to endeavour at pleasing G.o.d by taking the rod of reproof out of His hands." And when we talked of convents, and the hardships suffered in them: "Remember always," said he, "that a convent is an idle place, and where there is nothing to be _done_ something must be _endured_: mustard has a bad taste per se, you may observe, but very insipid food cannot be eaten without it."

His respect, however, for places of religious retirement was carried to the greatest degree of earthly veneration; the Benedictine convent at Paris paid him all possible honours in return, and the Prior and he parted with tears of tenderness. Two of that college being sent to England on the mission some years after, spent much of their time with him at Bolt Court, I know, and he was ever earnest to retain their friendship; but though beloved by all his Roman Catholic acquaintance, particularly Dr. Nugent, for whose esteem he had a singular value, yet was Mr. Johnson a most unshaken Church of England man; and I think, or at least I once _did_ think, that a letter written by him to Mr. Barnard, the King's Librarian, when he was in Italy collecting books, contained some very particular advice to his friend to be on his guard against the seductions of the Church of Rome.

The settled aversion Dr. Johnson felt towards an infidel he expressed to all ranks, and at all times, without the smallest reserve; for though on common occasions he paid great deference to birth or t.i.tle, yet his regard for truth and virtue never gave way to meaner considerations. We talked of a dead wit one evening, and somebody praised him. "Let us never praise talents so ill employed, sir; we foul our mouths by commending such infidels," said he. "Allow him the lumieres at least,"

entreated one of the company. "I do allow him, sir," replied Johnson, "just enough to light him to h.e.l.l." Of a Jamaica gentleman, then lately dead: "He will not, whither he is now gone," said Johnson, "find much difference, I believe, either in the climate or the company." The Abbe Reynal probably remembers that, being at the house of a common friend in London, the master of it approached Johnson with that gentleman so much celebrated in his hand, and this speech in his mouth: "Will you permit me, sir, to present to you the Abbe Reynal?" "_No_, _sir_," replied the Doctor very loud, and suddenly turned away from them both.

Though Mr. Johnson had but little reverence either for talents or fortune when he found them unsupported by virtue, yet it was sufficient to tell him a man was very pious, or very charitable, and he would at least _begin_ with him on good terms, however the conversation might end. He would sometimes, too, good-naturedly enter into a long chat for the instruction or entertainment of people he despised. I perfectly recollect his condescending to delight my daughter's dancing-master with a long argument about _his_ art, which the man protested, at the close of the discourse, the Doctor knew more of than himself, who remained astonished, enlightened, and amused by the talk of a person little likely to make a good disquisition upon dancing. I have sometimes, indeed, been rather pleased than vexed when Mr. Johnson has given a rough answer to a man who perhaps deserved one only half as rough, because I knew he would repent of his hasty reproof, and make us all amends by some conversation at once instructive and entertaining, as in the following cases. A young fellow asked him abruptly one day, "Pray, sir, what and where is Palmyra?

I heard somebody talk last night of the ruins of Palmyra." "'Tis a hill in Ireland," replies Johnson, "with palms growing on the top, and a bog at the bottom, and so they call it _Palm-mira_." Seeing, however, that the lad thought him serious, and thanked him for the information, he undeceived him very gently indeed: told him the history, geography, and chronology of Tadmor in the wilderness, with every incident that literature could furnish, I think, or eloquence express, from the building of Solomon's palace to the voyage of Dawkins and Wood.

On another occasion, when he was musing over the fire in our drawing-room at Streatham, a young gentleman called to him suddenly, and I suppose he thought disrespectfully, in these words: "Mr. Johnson, would you advise me to marry?" "I would advise no man to marry, sir," returns for answer in a very angry tone Dr. Johnson, "who is not likely to propagate understanding," and so left the room. Our companion looked confounded, and I believe had scarce recovered the consciousness of his own existence, when Johnson came back, and drawing his chair among us, with altered looks and a softened voice, joined in the general chat, insensibly led the conversation to the subject of marriage, where he laid himself out in a dissertation so useful, so elegant, so founded on the true knowledge of human life, and so adorned with beauty of sentiment, that no one ever recollected the offence, except to rejoice in its consequences. He repented just as certainly, however, if he had been led to praise any person or thing by accident more than he thought it deserved; and was on such occasions comically earnest to destroy the praise or pleasure he had unintentionally given.

Sir Joshua Reynolds mentioned some picture as excellent. "It has often grieved me, sir," said Mr. Johnson, "to see so much mind as the science of painting requires laid out upon such perishable materials. Why do not you oftener make use of copper? I could wish your superiority in the art you profess to be preserved in stuff more durable than canvas." Sir Joshua urged the difficulty of procuring a plate large enough for historical subjects, and was going to raise further observations. "What foppish obstacles are these!" exclaims on a sudden Dr. Johnson. "Here is Thrale has a thousand tun of copper; you may paint it all round if you will, I suppose; it will serve him to brew in afterwards. Will it not, sir?" (to my husband, who sat by). Indeed, Dr. Johnson's utter scorn of painting was such that I have heard him say that he should sit very quietly in a room hung round with the works of the greatest masters, and never feel the slightest disposition to turn them if their backs were outermost, unless it might be for the sake of telling Sir Joshua that he _had_ turned them. Such speeches may appear offensive to many, but those who knew he was too blind to discern the perfections of an art which applies itself immediately to our eyesight must acknowledge he was not in the wrong.

He delighted no more in music than in painting; he was almost as deaf as he was blind; travelling with Dr. Johnson was for these reasons tiresome enough. Mr. Thrale loved prospects, and was mortified that his friend could not enjoy the sight of those different dispositions of wood and water, hill and valley, that travelling through England and France affords a man. But when he wished to point them out to his companion: "Never heed such nonsense," would be the reply; "a blade of gra.s.s is always a blade of gra.s.s, whether in one country or another. Let us, if we _do_ talk, talk about something; men and women are my subjects of inquiry; let us see how these differ from those we have left behind."

When we were at Rouen together, he took a great fancy to the Abbe Roffette, with whom he conversed about the destruction of the order of Jesuits, and condemned it loudly as a blow to the general power of the Church, and likely to be followed with many and dangerous innovations, which might at length become fatal to religion itself, and shake even the foundation of Christianity. The gentleman seemed to wonder and delight in his conversation. The talk was all in Latin, which both spoke fluently, and Mr. Johnson p.r.o.nounced a long eulogium upon Milton with so much ardour, eloquence, and ingenuity, that the Abbe rose from his seat and embraced him. My husband, seeing them apparently so charmed with the company of each other, politely invited the Abbe to England, intending to oblige his friend, who, instead of thanking, reprimanded him severely before the man for such a sudden burst of tenderness towards a person he could know nothing at all of, and thus put a sudden finish to all his own and Mr. Thrale's entertainment from the company of the Abbe Roffette.

When at Versailles the people showed us the theatre. As we stood on the stage looking at some machinery for playhouse purposes: "Now we are here, what shall we act, Mr. Johnson--The Englishman at Paris?" "No, no,"

replied he, "we will try to act Harry the Fifth." His dislike to the French was well known to both nations, I believe; but he applauded the number of their books and the graces of their style. "They have few sentiments," said he, "but they express them neatly; they have little meat, too, but they dress it well." Johnson's own notions about eating, however, were nothing less than delicate: a leg of pork boiled till it dropped from the bone, a veal pie with plums and sugar, or the outside cut of a salt b.u.t.tock of beef, were his favourite dainties. With regard to drink, his liking was for the strongest, as it was not the flavour, but the effect, he sought for, and professed to desire; and when I first knew him, he used to pour capillaire into his port wine. For the last twelve years, however, he left off all fermented liquors. To make himself some amends, indeed, he took his chocolate liberally, pouring in large quant.i.ties of cream, or even melted b.u.t.ter; and was so fond of fruit, that though he usually ate seven or eight large peaches of a morning before breakfast began, and treated them with proportionate attention after dinner again, yet I have heard him protest that he never had quite as much as he wished of wall-fruit, except once in his life, and that was when we were all together at Ombersley, the seat of my Lord Sandys. I was saying to a friend one day, that I did not like goose; "one smells it so while it is roasting," said I. "But you, madam,"

replies the Doctor, "have been at all times a fortunate woman, having always had your hunger so forestalled by indulgence, that you never experienced the delight of smelling your dinner beforehand." "Which pleasure," answered I pertly, "is to be enjoyed in perfection by such as have the happiness to pa.s.s through Porridge Island of a morning." "Come, come," says he, gravely, "let's have no sneering at what is serious to so many. Hundreds of your fellow-creatures, dear lady, turn another way, that they may not be tempted by the luxuries of Porridge Island to wish for gratifications they are not able to obtain. You are certainly not better than all of _them_; give G.o.d thanks that you are happier."

I received on another occasion as just a rebuke from Mr. Johnson, for an offence of the same nature, and hope I took care never to provoke a third; for after a very long summer, particularly hot and dry, I was wishing naturally but thoughtlessly for some rain to lay the dust as we drove along the Surrey roads. "I cannot bear," replied he, with much asperity and an altered look, "when I know how many poor families will perish next winter for want of that bread which the present drought will deny them, to hear ladies sighing for rain, only that their complexions may not suffer from the heat, or their clothes be incommoded by the dust.