Etat. 67]

EDMUND HECTOR

589

is the best state for man in general; and every man is a worse man, in proportion as he is unfit for the married state."

I have always loved the simplicity of manners and the spiritual-mindedness of the Quakers; and talking with Mr. Lloyd, I observed that the essential part of religion was piety, a devout intercourse with the Divinity; and that many a man was a Quaker without knowing it.

As Dr. Johnson had said to me in the morning, while we walked together, that he liked individuals among the Quakers, but not the sect; when we were at Mr. Lloyd's, I kept clear of introducing any questions concerning the peculiarities of their faith. But I having asked to look at Baskerville's edition of "Barclay's

From "The Old Square," by Messrs. Hill and Dent, by kind permission of Mr. Achilles Taylor, Birmingham
EDMUND HECTOR'S HOUSE: THE OLD SQUARE, BIRMINGHAM

which Johnson visited when at Birmingham, as a tablet on the wall of the house testifies.

Apology," Johnson laid hold of it; and the chapter on baptism happening to open, Johnson remarked, "He says there is neither precept nor practice for baptism, in the Scriptures; that is false." Here he was the aggressor, by no means in a gentle manner; and the good Quakers had the advantage of him; for he had read negligently, and had not observed that Barclay speaks of infant baptism; which they calmly made him perceive. Mr. Lloyd, however, was in a great mistake; for when insisting that the rite of baptism by water was to cease, when the spiritual administration of CHRIST began, he maintained that John the Baptist said, "My baptism shall decrease, but his shall increase." Whereas the words are, He must increase, but I must decrease." *

John iii, 30.

66

aving objected to the "observance of days, and months, and years," Johnson answered, "The Church does not superstitiously observe days, merely as days, but as memorials of important facts. Christmas might be kept as well upon one day of the year as another; but there should be a stated day for commemorating the birth of our Saviour, because there is danger that what may be done on any day will be neglected."

He said to me at another time, "Sir, the holidays observed by our church are of great use in religion." There can be no doubt of this, in a limited sense; I mean if the number of such consecrated portions of time be not too extensive. The excellent Mr. Nelson's "Festivals and Fasts," which has, I understand, the greatest sale of any book ever printed in England, except the Bible, is a most valuable help to devotion; and, in addition to it, I would recommend two sermons on the same subject, by Mr. Pott, Archdeacon of St. Albans, equally distinguished for piety and elegance. I am sorry to have it to say that Scotland is the only Christian country, Catholic or Protestant, where the great events of our religion are not solemnly commemorated by its ecclesiastical establishment, on days set apart for the purpose.

EDMUND HECTOR

(b. 1709 (?), d. 1794)

a leading Birmingham surgeon, who lived in the Old Square, and died at the age of eighty-four. He was Johnson's schoolfellow, and born about the same year.

Mr. Hector was so good as to accompany me to see the great works of Mr. Bolton, at a place which he has called Soho, about two miles from Birmingham, which the very ingenious proprietor showed me himself to the best advantage. I wished Johnson had been with us for it was a scene which I should have been glad to contemplate by his light. The vastness and the contrivance of some of the machinery would have "matched his mighty mind." I shall never forget Mr. Bolton's expression to me. "I sell here, Sir, what all the world desires to have-POWER." He had about seven hundred people at work. I contemplated him as an iron chieftain, and he seemed to be a father to his tribe. One of them came to him, complaining grievously of his landlord for having distrained his goods. "Your landlord is in the right, Smith (said Bolton). But I'll tell you what find you a friend who will lay down one half of your rent, and I'll lay down the other half; and you shall have your goods again."

From Mr. Hector I now learnt many particulars of Dr. Johnson's early life, which, with others that he gave me at different times since, have contributed to the formation of this work.

Dr. Johnson said to me in the morning, "You will see, Sir, at Mr. Hector's, his sister, Mrs. Careless, a clergyman's widow. She was the first woman with whom I was in love. It dropt out of my head imperceptibly; but she and I shall always have a kindness for each other." He laughed at the notion that a man can never be really in love but once, and considered it as a mere romantic fancy.

On our return from Mr. Bolton's, Mr. Hector took me to his house, where we found Johnson sitting placidly at tea, with his first love; who, though now advanced in years, was a genteel woman, very agreeable and well-bred.

Johnson lamented to Mr. Hector the state of one of their schoolfellows,

Etat. 67]

MRS. CARELESS

4591

ptained, I on, quite as a

Mr. Charles Congreve, a clergyman, which he thus described believe, considerable preferment in Ireland, but now lives in valetudinarian, afraid to go into any house but his own. He takes a short airing in his post-chaise every day. He has an elderly woman, whom he calls cousin who lives with him, and jogs his elbow, when his glass has stood too long empty and encourages him in drinking, in which he is very willing to be encouraged; not that he gets drunk, for he is a very pious man, but he is always muddy. He confesses to one bottle of port every day, and he probably drinks more. He is quite unsocial; his conversation is quite monosyllabical; and when, at my last visit, I asked him what a clock it was, that signal of my departure had so pleasing an effect on him, that he sprang up to look at his watch, like a greyhound bounding at a hare." When Johnson took leave of Mr. Hector, he said, "Don't grow like Congreve; nor let me grow like him, when you are near me."

When he again talked of Mrs. Careless to-night, he seemed to have had his affection revived; for he said, "If I had married her, it might have been as happy' BOSWELL "Pray, Sir, do you not suppose that there are fifty women in the world, with any one of whom a man may be as happy as with any one woman in particular?" JOHNSON: "Aye, Sir, fifty thousand." BOSWELL:“Then, Sir, you are not of opinion with some who imagine that certain men and certain women are made for each other; and that they cannot be happy if they miss their counterparts." JOHNSON: "To be sure not, Sir. I believe marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor, upon a due consideration of the characters and circumstances, without the parties having any choice

in the matter."
I wished to
have stayed at
Birmingham to-
night, to have
talked more with
Mr. Hector; but
my friend was im-
patient to reach
his native city;
so we drove on
that stage in the
dark, and were
long pensive and
silent. When we

came within the

focus of the Lich

field lamps," Now (said he), we are getting out of a state of death." We put up at the Three Crowns, not one of the great inns, but a good old-fashioned

THE THREE CROWNS INN, LICHFIELD

Situated next door but one to the house in which Johnson was born. Johnson and Boswell stayed at this hostelry during their visit to Lichfield in 1776.

one, which was kept by Mr. Wilkins, and was the very next house to that in which Johnson was born and brought up, and which was still his own property.* We had a comfortable supper, and got into high spirits. I felt all my Toryism glow in this old capital of Staffordshire. I could have offered incense genio loci; and I indulged in libations of that ale which Boniface, in the "Beaux Stratagem," recommends with such an eloquent jollity.

She

Next morning he introduced me to Mrs. Lucy Porter, his step-daughter. was now an old maid, with much simplicity of manner. She had never been in London. Her brother, a captain in the Navy, had left her a fortune of ten thousand pounds; about a third of which she had laid out in building a stately house, and making a handsome garden, in an elevated situation in Lichfield. Johnson, when here by himself, used to live at her house. She reverenced him, and he had a parental tenderness for her.

We then visited Mr. Peter Garrick, who had that morning received a letter from his brother David, announcing our coming to Lichfield. He was engaged to dinner, but asked us to tea, and to sleep at his house. Johnson, however, would not quit his old acquaintance Wilkins, of the Three Crowns. The family likeness of the Garricks was very striking; and Johnson thought that David's vivacity was not so peculiar to himself as was supposed. "Sir (said he), I don't know but if Peter had cultivated all the arts of gaiety as much as David has done, he might have been as brisk and lively. Depend upon it, Sir, vivacity, is much an art, and depends greatly on habit." I believe there is a good deal of truth in this, notwithstanding a ludicrous story told me by a lady abroad, of a heavy German baron, who had lived much with the young English at Geneva, and was ambitious to be as lively as they ; with which view, he, with assiduous exertion, was jumping over the tables and chairs in his lodging; and when the people of the house ran in and asked, with surprise, what was the matter, he answered, "Sh' apprens t'etre fif."

We dined at our inn, and had with us a Mr. Jackson, one of Johnson's schoolfellows, whom he treated with much kindness, though he seemed to be a low man, dull and untaught. He had a coarse gray coat, black waistcoat,

I went through the house where my illustrious friend was born, with a reverence with which it doubtless will long be visited. An engraved view of it, with the adjacent buildings, is in The Gentleman's Magazine for Feb., 1785.

Etat. 67]

JOHNSON'S PRONUNCIATION

593

greasy leather breeches, and yellow uncurled wig; and his countenance had the ruddiness which betokens one who is in no haste to "leave his can." He drank only ale. He had tried to be a cutler at Birmingham, but had not succeeded: and now he lived poorly at home, and had some scheme of dressing leather in a better manner than common: to his indistinct account of which Dr. Johnson listened with patient attention, that he might assist him with his advice. Here was an instance of genuine humanity and real kindness in this great man, who has been most unjustly represented as altogether harsh and destitute of tenderness. A thousand such instances might have been recorded. in the course of his long life; though that his temper was warm and hasty, and his manner often rough, cannot be denied.

66

From an engraving

RICHARD GREEN (b. 1716, d. 1793) was an apothecary at Lichfield, and a relation of Johnson's. He was the first to introduce the printing press into Lichfield. His museum contained a collection of antiquities, curiosities, and works of art. Some of the armour is now in the Tower of London. Johnson, who paid several visits to Mr. Green's collection, once said to him, "Sir, I should as soon have thought of building a man-ofwar as of collecting such a museum." In a letter to Mrs. Thrale, from Lichfield, of June 13th, 1775, Johnson says, "Mr. Green has got a cast of Shakspeare, which he holds to be a very exact resemblance."

I saw here, for the first time, oatale; and oat-cakes, not hard as in Scotland, but soft like a Yorkshire cake, were served at breakfast. It was pleasant to me to find that "oats," the "food of horses," were so much used as the food of the people in Dr. Johnson's own town. He expatiated in praise of Lichfield and its inhabitants, who, he said, were the most sober, decent people in England, the genteelest in proportion to their wealth, and spoke the purest English." I doubted as to the last article of this eulogy: for they had several provincial sounds; as, there pronounced like fear, instead of like fair; once pronounced woonse, instead of wunse or wonse. Johnson himself never got entirely free of those provincial accents. Garrick sometimes used to take him off, squeezing a lemon into a punch-bowl, with uncouth gesticulations, looking round the company, and calling out, "Who's for poonsh?"* Very little business appeared to be going forward in Lichfield. I found, however, two strange manufactures for so inland a place, sail-cloth and streamers for ships; and I observed them making some saddle-cloths, and dressing sheep-skins: but upon the whole the busy hand of industry seemed to be quite slackened. "Surely, Sir (said I), you are an idle set of people." "Sir (said Johnson), we are a city of

• Garrick himself, like the Lichfieldians, always said-shupreme, shuperior. B.

This is still the vulgar pronunciation of Ireland, where the pronunciation of the English language is doubtless that which generally prevailed in England in the time of Queen Elizabeth. M.] 38-(2279)