plation, and that he uniformly adhered to that strange opinion which his indolent disposition made him utter: No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.' Numerous instances to refute this will occur to all who are versed in the history of literature. He gave us one of the many sketches of character which were treasured in his mind, and which he was wont to produce quite unexpectedly in a very entertaining manner. 'I lately,' said he, 'received a letter from the East Indies, from a gentleman whom I formerly knew very well. He had returned from that country with a handsome fortune, as it was reckoned, before means were found to acquire those immense sums which have been brought from thence of late; he was a scholar, and an agreeable man, and lived very prettily in London till his wife died. After her death he took to dissipation and gaming, and lost all he had. One evening he lost £1000 to a gentleman whose name I am sorry I have forgotten. Next morning he sent the gentleman £500 with an apology that it was all he had in the world. The gentleman, sent the money back to him, declaring he would not accept of it; and adding, that if Mr. more he would lend it to him. He resolved to go out again to the East Indies, and make his fortune anew. He got a considerable appointment, and I had some intention of accompanying him. Had I thought then as I do now, I should have gone but at that time I had objections to quitting England.' had occasion for £500 It was a very remarkable circumstance about Johnson, whom shallow observers have supposed to have been ignorant of the world,.that very few men had seen greater variety of characters; and none could observe them better, as was evident from the strong yet nice portraits which he often drew. I have frequently thought that if he had made out what the French call une catalogue raisonnée of all the people who had passed under his observation, it would have afforded a very rich fund of instruction and entertainment. The suddenness with which his accounts of some of them started out in conversation, was not less pleasing than surprising. I remember he once observed to me, It is wonderful, sir, what is to be found in London. The most literary conversation that I ever enjoyed was at the table of Jack Ellis, a money-scrivener behind the Royal Exchange, with whom I at one period used to dine generally once a week." 1 This Mr. Ellis was, I believe, the last of that profession called Scriveners, which is one of the London companies, but of which the business is no longer carried on separately, but is transacted by attorneys and others. He was a man of literature and talents. He was the author of a Hudibrastic version of Maphæus's Canto, in addition to the Eneid; of some poems in Dodsley's Collections; and various other small pieces; Volumes would be required to contain a list of his numerous and various acquaintance, none of whom he ever forgot, and could describe and discriminate them all with precision and vivacity. He associated with persons the most widely different in manners, abilities, rank, and accomplishments. He was at once the companion of the brilliant Colonel Forrester of the Guards, who wrote The Polite Philosopher, and of the awkward and uncouth Robert Levett; of Lord Thurlow, and Mr. Sastres, the Italian master; and has dined one day with the beauti ful, gay, and fascinating Lady Craven,' and the next with the good Mrs. Gardiner, the tallowchandler, on Snow Hill. On my expressing my wonder at his discovering so much of the knowledge peculiar to different professions, he told me, I learnt what I know of law chiefly from Mr. Ballow," a very able man. I learnt some too from Chambers; but was not so teachable then. One is not willing to be taught by a young man.' When I expressed a wish to know more about Mr. Ballow, Johnson said, 'Sir, I have seen him but once these twenty years. tide of life has driven us different ways.' I was sorry at the time to hear this; but whoever quits the creeks of private connections, and fairly gets into the great ocean of London, will by imperceptible degrees unavoidably experience such cessations of acquaint ance. The 'My knowledge of physic,' he added, 'I learnt from Dr. James, whom I helped in writing the proposals for his Dictionary, and but being a very modest man, never put his name to anything. He showed me a translation which he had made of Ovid's Epistles, very prettily done. There is a good engraved portrait of hun by Pether, from a picture by Fry, which hangs in the hall of the Scriveners' Company. I visited him October 4, 1790, in his ninety-third year, and found his judgment distinct and clear, and his memory, though faded so as to fail him occasionally, yet, as he assured me, and I indeed per ceived, able to serve him very well after a little recollection. It was agreeable to observe that he was free from the discontent and fretfulness which too often molest old age. He, in the summer of that year, walked to Rotherhithe, where he dined and walked home in the evening. He died on the 31st of December 1791.-BosWELL. 1 Lord Macartney, who, with other distinguished qualities, is remarkable also for an elegant pleasantry, told me that he met Johnson at Lady Craven's, and that he seemed jealous of any interference. 'So,' said his Lordship, smiling, I kept back.'-BosWELL 2 There is an account of him in Sir John Hawkins's Life of Johnson, p. 224. Mr. Thomas Ballow was author of an excellent Treatise of Equity, printed anonymously in 1742, and lately republished with very valuable Mr. Ballow additions, by John Fonblanque, Esq. died suddenly in London, July 26, 1782, aged seventyfive, and is mentioned in the Gentleman's Magazine for that year as a great Greek scholar, and famous for his knowledge of the old philosophy.'-MALONE. 2 also a little in the Dictionary itself. I also learnt from Dr. Lawrence, but was then grown more stubborn.' A curious incident happened to-day while Mr. Thrale and I sat with him. Francis announced that a large packet was brought to him from the post-office, said to have come from Lisbon, and it was charged £7, 10s. He would not receive it, supposing it to be some trick, nor did he even look at it. But, upon inquiry afterwards, he found it was a real packet for him, from that very friend in the East Indies of whom he had been speaking; and the ship which carried it having come from Portugal, this packet, with others, had been put into the post-office at Lisbon. I mentioned a new gaming club, of which Mr. Beauclerk had given me an account, where the members played to a desperate extent. JOHNSON: 'Depend upon it, sir, this is mere talk. Who is ruined by gaming? You will not find six instances in an age. There is a strange rout made about deep play: whereas you have many more people ruined by adventurous trade, and yet we do not hear such an outcry against it.' THRALE: There may be few people absolutely ruined by deep play; but very many are much hurt in their circumstances by it.' JOHNSON: 'Yes, sir, and so are very many by other kinds of expense.' I had heard him talk once before in the same manner; and at Oxford he said, 'he wished he had learned to play at cards.' The truth however is, that he loved to display his ingenuity in argument; and therefore would sometimes in conversation maintain opinions which he was sensible were wrong, but in supporting which, his reasoning and wit would be Lost conspicuous. He would begin thus: 'Why, sir, as to the good or evil of card-playing-' | 'Now,' said Garrick, he is thinking which side he shall take.' He appeared to have a pleasure in contradiction, especially when any opinion whatever was delivered with an air of confidence; so that there was hardly any topic, if not one of the great truths of religion and morality, that he might not have been incited to argue either for or against. Lord Elibank 3 had the highest admiration of his powers. He once observed to me, 'Whatever opinions John| son maintains, I will not say that he convinces me; but he never fails to show me that he has good reasons for it. I have heard Johnson pay Lis Lordship this high compliment: 'I never was in Lord Elibank's company without learning something.' We sat together till it was too late for the afternoon service. Thrale said he had come with intention to go to church with us. We went at seven to evening prayers at St. Clement's Church, after having drunk coffee; an indulgence which I understand Johnson yielded to on this occasion in compliment to Thrale. On Sunday, April 7, Easter-Day, after having been at St. Paul's Cathedral, I came to Dr. Johnson, according to my usual custom. It seemed to me that there was always something peculiarly mild and placid in his manner upon this holy festival, the commemoration of the most joyful event in the history of our world, the resurrection of our LORD and SAVIOUR, who, having triumphed over death and the grave, proclaimed immortality to mankind. I repeated to him an argument of a lady of my acquaintance, who maintained that her husband's having been guilty of numberless infidelities released her from conjugal obligations, because they were reciprocal. JOHNSON: This is miserable stuff, sir. To the contract of marriage, besides the man and wife, there is a third party-Society; and if it be considered as a vow-GOD: and therefore it cannot be dissolved by their consent alone. Laws are not made for particular cases, but for men in general. A woman may be unhappy with her husband; but she cannot be freed from him without the approbation of the civil and ecclesiastical power. A man may be unhappy because he is not so rich as another; but he is not to seize upon another's property with his own hand.' BOSWELL: 'But, sir, this lady does not want that the contract should be dissolved; she only argues that she may indulge herself in gallantries with equal freedom as her husband does, provided she takes care not to introduce a spurious issue into his family, You know, sir, what Macrobius has told of Julia.' JOHNSON: This lady of yours, sir, I think, is very fit for a brothel.' Mr. Macbean, author of the Dictionary of Ancient Geography, came in. He mentioned that he had been forty years absent from Scotland. Ah, Boswell!' said Johnson, smiling, what would you give to be forty years from Scotland?' I said, 'I should not like to be so long absent from the seat of my ancestors.' This gentleman, Mrs. Williams, and Mr. Levett dined with us. Dr. Johnson made a remark, which both Mr. Macbean and I thought new. It was this: that 'the law against usury is for the protection of creditors as well as debtors; for if there were no such check, people would be apt, from the temptation of great interest, to lend to desperate persons by whom they would lose their money. Accordingly there are instances of ladies being ruined by having injudiciously sunk their for 1 Nunquam enim nisi navi plena tollo vectorem.' Lib. ii. c. 5. tunes for high annuities, which after a few years ceased to be paid in consequence of the ruined circumstances of the borrower.' Mrs. Williams was very peevish; and I wondered at Johnson's patience with her now, as I had often done on similar occasions. The truth is, that his humane consideration of the forlorn and indigent state in which this lady was left by her father, induced him to treat her with the utmost tenderness, and even to be desirous of procuring her amusement, so as sometimes to incommode many of his friends by carrying her with him to their houses, where, from her manner of eating, in consequence of her blindness, she could not but offend the delicacy of persons of nice sensations. After coffee, we went to afternoon service in St. Clement's Church. Observing some beggars in the street as we walked along, I said to him, I supposed there was no civilised country in the world where the misery of want in the lowest classes of the people was prevented. JOHNSON: ‘I believe, sir, there is not ; but it is better that some should be unhappy, than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality. When the service was ended I went home with him, and we sat quietly by ourselves. He recommended Dr. Cheyne's books.1 I said, I thought Cheyne had been reckoned whimsical. -'So he was,' said he, in some things; but there is no end of objections. There are few books to which some objection or other may not be made.' He added, 'I would not have you read anything else of Cheyne, but his book on Health, and his English Malady.' Upon the question whether a man who had been guilty of vicious actions would do well to force himself into solitude and sadness? JOHNSON: No, sir, unless it prevent him from being vicious again. With some people gloomy penitence is only madness turned upside down. A man may be gloomy till, in order to be relieved from gloom, he has recourse again to criminal indulgences.' On Wednesday, April 10, I dined with him at Mr. Thrale's, where were Mr. Murphy and some other company. Before dinner, Dr. Johnson and I passed some time by ourselves. I was sorry to find it was now resolved that the proposed journey to Italy should not take place this year. He said, 'I am disappointed, to be sure; but it is not a great disappointment.' I wondered to see him bear with a philosophical calmness what would have made most people peevish and fretful. I perceived, however, that he had so warmly cherished the hope of enjoying classical scenes, that he could not easily part with the scheme; for he said, 'I shall probably contrive to get to Italy some other way. But I 1 A celebrated physician and author of medical and mathematical works. won't mention it to Mr. and Mrs. Thrale, as it might vex them.' I suggested that going to Italy might have done Mr. and Mrs. Thrale good. JOHNSON: 'I rather believe not, sir. While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.' At dinner Mr. Murphy entertained us with the history of Mr. Joseph Simpson, a schoolfellow of Dr. Johnson's, a barrister-at-law, of good parts, but who fell into a dissipated course of life, incompatible with that success in his profession which he once had, and would otherwise have deservedly maintained; yet he still preserved a dignity in his deportment. He wrote a tragedy on the story of Leonidas, entitled The Patriot. He read it to a company of lawyers, who found so many faults that he wrote it over again: so then there were two tragedies on the same subject and with the same title. Dr. Johnson told us that one of them was still in his possession. This very piece was, after his death, published by some person who had been about him, and for the sake of a little hasty profit was fallaciously advertised, so as to make it be believed to have been written by Johnson himself. I said I disliked the custom which some people had of bringing their children into company, because it in a manner forced us to pay foolish compliments to please their parents. JOHNSON: 'You are right, sir. We may be excused for not caring much about other people's children, for there are many who care very little about their own children. It may be observed that men who, from being engaged in business, or from their course of life in whatever way, seldom see their children, do not care much about them. I myself should not have had much fondness for a child of my own.' MRS. THRALE: Nay, sir, how can you talk so?' JOHNSON: At least I never wished to have a child.' Mr. Murphy mentioned Dr. Johnson's having a design to publish an edition of Cowley. Johnson said he did not know but he should; and he expressed his disapprobation of Dr. Hurd for having published a mutilated edition under the title of Select Works of Abraham Cowley. Mr. Murphy thought it a bad precedent, observing that any author might be used in the same manner, and that it was pleasing to see the variety of an author's compositions at different periods. We talked of Flatman's poems; and Mrs. Thrale observed that Pope had partly borrowed from him The Dying Christian to his Soul. Johnson repeated Rochester's verses upon Flatman, which I think by much too severe : 'Nor that slow drudge in swift Pindaric strains, Flatman, who Cowley imitates with pains, And rides a jaded muse, whipt with loose reins.' I like to recollect all the passages that I heard Johnson repeat-it stamps a value on them. He told us that the book entitled The Lives of the Poets, by Mr. Cibber, was entirely compiled by Mr. Shiels, a Scotchman, one of his 1 In The Monthly Review for May 1792, there is such a correction of the above passage as I should think myself very culpable not to subjoin :--This account is very inaccurate. The following statement of facts we know to be true in every material circumstance: Shiels was the principal collector and digester of the materials for the work; but as he was very raw in authorship, an indifferent writer in prose, and his language full of Scotticisms, Cibber, who was a clever lively fellow, and then soliciting employment among the booksellers, was engaged to correct the style and diction of the whole work, then intended to make only four volumes, with power to alter, expunge, or add, as he liked. He was also to supply notes occasionally, especially concerning those dramatic poets with whom he had been chiefly conversant. He also engaged to write several of the lives, which, as w are told, he accordingly performed. He was further useful in striking out the Jacobitical and Tory sentiments which Shiels had industriously interspersed wherever he could bring them in; and as the success of the work appeared, after all, very doubtful, he was content with £21 for his labour, besides a few sets of the books, to disperse among his friends. Shiels had nearly £70, besides the advantage of many of the best lives in the work being communicated by friends to the undertaking, and for which Mr. Shiels had the same consideration as for the rest, being paid by the sheet, for amanuenses. 'The booksellers,' said he, 'gave Theophilus Cibber, who was then in prison, ten guineas to allow Mr. Cibber to be put upon the title-page as the author. By this, a double imposition was intended: in the first place, that it was the work of a Cibber at all; and in the second place, that it was the work of old Cibber.' Mr. Murphy said, that 'the Memoirs of Gray's Life set him much higher in his estimation than his poems did; for you there saw a man constantly at work in literature.' Johnson acquiesced in this; but depreciated the book, I thought very unreasonably. For he said, 'I forced myself to read it, only because it was a common topic of conversation. I found it mighty dull; and, as to the style, it is fit for the second table.' Why he thought so I was at a loss to conceive. He now gave it as his opinion, that 'Akenside was a superior poet both to Gray and Mason.' Talking of the Reviews, Johnson said, 'I think them very impartial: I do not know an instance of partiality.' He mentioned what had passed upon the subject of the Monthly and Critical Reviews, in the conversation with which his Majesty had honoured him. He expatiated a little more on them this evening. 'The Monthly Reviewers,' said he, are not Deists; but they are Christians with as little Christianity as may be; and are for pulling down all establishments. The Critical Reviewers are for sup State. The Critical Reviewers, I believe, often review without reading the books through; but lay hold of a topic, and write chiefly from their own minds. The Monthly Reviewers are duller men, and are glad to read the books through.' He talked of Lord Lyttleton's extreme anxiety as an author; observing that he was thirty years in preparing his history, and that he employed a man to point it for him; as if (laughing) another man could point his sense better than himself.' Mr. Murphy said he understood his the whole. He was, however, so angry with his Whig-porting the constitution, both in Church and gish supervisor (THE., like his father, being a violent stickler for the political principles which prevailed in the reign of George the Second), for so unmercifully mutilating his copy and scouting his politics, that he wrote Cibber a challenge; but was prevented from sending it by the publisher, who fairly laughed him out of his fury. The proprietors, too, were discontented in the end on account of Mr. Cibber's unexpected industry; for his corrections and alterations in the proof-sheets were so numerous and considerable, that the printer made for them a grievous addition to his bill; and, in fine, all parties were dissatisfied. On the whole, the work was productive of no profit to the undertakers, who had agreed, in case of success, to cake Cibber a present of some addition to the twenty guineas which he had received, and for which his recept is now in the bookseller's hands. We are further assured that he actually obtained an additional sum; when he soon after (in the year 1758) unfortunately embarked for Dublin, on an engagement for one of the theatres there, but the ship was cast away, and every person on board perished. There were about sixty passengers, among whom was the Earl of Drogheda, with many other persons of consequence and property. As to the alleged design of making the compilement pass for the work of old Mr. Cibber, the charges seem to have been founded on a somewhat uncharitable constraction. We are assured that the thought was nct harboured by some of the proprietors, who are still living, and we hope that it did not occur to the first designer of the work, who was also the printer of it, and who bore a respectable character. We have been induced to enter thus circumstantially into the foregoing detail of facts relating to the Lives of the Poets, compiled by Messrs. Cibber and Shiels, from a sincere regard to that sacred principle of truth to which Dr. Johnson so rigidly adhered, according to the best of his knowledge, and which, we believe, no consideration would have prevailed on him to violate. In regard to the matter, which we now dismiss, he had, no doubt, been misled by partial and wrong informa tion. Shiels was the Doctor's amanuensis; he had quarrelled with Cibber: it is natural to suppose that he told his story in his own way, and it is certain that he was not "a very sturdy moralist."' This explanation appears to me very satisfactory. It is, however, to be observed that the story told by Johnson does not rest solely upon my record of his conversation, for he himself has published it in his Life of Hammond, where he says, 'The manuscript of Shiels is now in my possession.' Very probably he had trusted to Shiels' word, and never looked at it so as to compare it with the Lives of the Poets, as published under Mr. Cibber's name. What became of that manuscript I know not. I should have liked much to examine it. I suppose it was thrown into the fire in that impetuous combustion of papers which Johnson, I think, rashly executed when moribundus.-BosWELL. history was kept back several years for fear of Smollett. JOHNSON: This seems strange to Murphy and me, who never felt that anxiety, but sent what we wrote to the press, and let it take its chance.' MRS. THRALE: "The time has been, sir, when you felt it.' JOHNSON: Why really, madam, I do not recollect a time when that was the case.' him in one of his low characters exclaimed, he had said the same thing probably twenty times before.' Talking of The Spectator, he said, 'It is wonderful that there is such a proportion of bad papers in the half of the work which was not written by Addison; for there was all the world to write that half, yet not a half of that half is good. One of the finest pieces in the English language is the paper on Novelty, yet we do not hear it talked of. It was written by Grove, a dissenting teacher.' He would not, I perceived, call him a clergyman, though he was candid enough to allow very great merit to his composition.' JOHNSON: 'He had not far to dip, sir; tion. Mr. Murphy said he remembered when there were several people alive in London who enjoyed a considerable reputation merely from having written a paper in The Spectator. He mentioned particularly Mr. Ince, who used to frequent Tom's coffeehouse. 'But,' said Johnson, you must consider how highly Steele speaks of Mr. Ince.' He would not allow that the paper on carrying a boy to travel, signed Philip Homebred, which was reported to be written by the Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, had merit. He said, 'It was quite vulgar, and had nothing luminous.' Johnson mentioned Dr. Barry's System of Physic. He was a man,' said he, who had acquired a high reputation in Dublin, came over to England, and brought his reputation with him, but had not great success. His notion was, that pulsation occasions death by attrition; and that therefore the way to preserve life is to retard pulsation. But we know that pulsation is strongest in infants, and that we increase in growth while it operates in its regular course; so it cannot be the cause of destruction.' Soon after this, he said something very flattering to Mrs. Thrale, which I do not recollect; but it concluded with wishing her long life. 'Sir,' said I, 'if Dr. Barry's system be true, you have now shortened Mrs. Thrale's life, perhaps some minutes, by accelerating her pulsation.' Of a nobleman raised at a very early period to high office he said, 'His parts, sir, are pretty well for a lord, but would not be distinguished in a man who had nothing else but his parts.' A journey to Italy was still in his thoughts. He said, 'A man who has not been in Italy is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having seen what is expected a man should see. The grand object of travelling is to see the shores of the Mediterranean. On those shores were the four great Empires of the world-the Assyrian, the Persian, the Grecian, and the Roman. All our religion, almost all our law, almost all our arts, almost all that sets us above savages, has come to us from the shores of the Mediterranean.' The General observed, that 'THE MEDITERRANEAN would be a noble subject for a poem.' We talked of translation. I said I could not define it, nor could I think of a similitude to illustrate it; but that it appeared to me the translation of poetry could be only imitation. JOHNSON: 'You may translate books of science exactly. You may also translate history, in so far as it is not embellished with oratory, which is poetical. Poetry, indeed, cannot be translated; and therefore it is the poets that preserve the languages; for we would not be at the trouble to learn a language if we could have all that is written in it just as well in a translation. But as the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the language. On Thursday, April 11, I dined with him at General Paoli's, in whose house I now resided, and where I had ever afterwards the honour of being entertained with the kindest attention as his constant guest while I was in London, till I had a house of my own there. I mentioned having that morning introduced to Mr. Garrick, A gentleman maintained that the art of printCount Neni, a Flemish nobleman of great ranking had hurt real learning, by disseminating idle and fortune, to whom Garrick talked of Abel Drugger as a small part; and related, with pleasant vanity, that a Frenchman who had seen 1 Sir Edward Barry, Bart.-BOSWELL my writings. JOHNSON: 'Sir, if it had not been for the art of printing, we should now have no learning at all; for books would have perished faster than they could have been transcribed.' This observation seems not just, considering for how |