He

On Friday, April 6, he carried me to dine at a club, which, at his desire, had been lately formed at the Queen's Arms in St. Paul's Churchyard. He told Mr. Hoole that he wished to have a City Club, and asked him to collect one; but,' said he, 'don't let them be patriots.' The company were to-day very sensible, well-behaved men. I have preserved only two particulars of his conversation. said he was glad Lord George Gordon had escaped, rather than that a precedent should be established for hanging a man for constructive treason; which, in consistency with his true, manly, constitutional Toryism, he considered would be a dangerous engine of arbitrary power. And upon its being mentioned that an opulent and very indolent Scotch nobleman, who totally resigned the management of his affairs to a man of knowledge and abilities, had claimed some merit by saying, 'The next best thing to managing a man's own affairs well, is being sensible of incapacity, and not attempting it, but having a full confidence in one who can do it.' JOHNSON: Nay, sir, this is paltry. There is a middle course. Let a man give application, and depend upon it he will soon get above a despicable state of helplessness, and attain the power of acting for himself.'

On Saturday, April 7, I dined with him at Mr. Hoole's, with Governor Bouchier and Captain Orme, both of whom had been long in the East Indies; and being men of good sense and observation, were very entertaining. Johnson defended the oriental regulation of different castes of men, which was objected to as totally destructive of the hopes of rising in society by personal merit. He showed that there was a principle in it sufficiently plausible by analogy. 'We see,' said he, 'in metals that there are different species; and so likewise in animals, though one species may not differ very widely from another, as in the species of dogs,-the cur, the spaniel, and the mastiff. The Brahmins are the mastiffs of mankind.'

On Thursday, April 12, I dined with him at a bishop's, where were Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Berenger, and some more company. He had dined the day before at another bishop's. I have unfortunately recorded none of his conversation at the bishop's where we dined together; but I have preserved his ingenious

1 Messrs. Barclay, Perkins, & Co. became proprietors of the brewery on giving the sum of £135,000.

defence of his dining twice abroad in Passionweek,-a laxity in which I am convinced he would not have indulged himself at the time when he wrote his solemn paper in the Rambler, upon that awful season. It appeared to me, that by being much more in company, and enjoy. ing more luxurious living, he had contracted a keener relish for pleasure, and was consequently less rigorous in his religious rites. This he would not acknowledge; but he reasoned with admirable sophistry, as follows: 'Why, sir, a bishop's calling company together in this week is, to use the vulgar phrase, not the thing. But you must consider laxity is a bad thing: but preciseness is also a bad thing; and your general character may be more hurt by preciseness than by dining with a bishop in Passion-week. There might be a handle for reflection. It might be said, "He refuses to dine with a bishop in Passion-week, but was three Sundays absent from church."' BOSWELL: Very true, sir. But suppose a man to be uniformly of good conduct, would it not be better that he should refuse to dine with a bishop in this week, and so not encourage a bad practice by his example?' JOHNSON: 'Why, sir, you are to consider whether you might not do more harm by lessening the influence of a bishop's character by your disapprobation in refusing him, than by going to him.'

'TO MRS. LUCY PORTER, IN LICHFIELD.

'LONDON, April 12, 1781. 'DEAR MADAM,-Life is full of troubles. I have just lost my dear friend Thrale. I hope he is happy; but I have had a great loss. I am otherwise pretty well. I require some care of myself, but that care is not ineffectual; and when I am out of order, I think it often my own fault.

"The spring is now making quick advances. As it is the season in which the whole world is enlivened and invigorated, I hope that both you and I shall partake of its benefits. My desire is to see Lichfield; but being left executor to my friend, I know not whether I can be spared. But I will try, for it is now long since we saw one another; and how little we can promise ourselves many more interviews, we are taught by hourly examples of mortality. Let us try to live so as that mortality may not be an evil. Write to me soon, my dearest; your letters will give me great pleasure.

'I am sorry that Mr. Porter has not had his box; but by sending it to Mr. Mathias, who very readily undertook its conveyance, I did the best I could, and perhaps before now he has it.

'Be so kind as to make my compliments to my friends; I have a great value for their kindness, and hope to enjoy it before summer is past. Do write to me.-I am, dearest love, your most humble servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.'

On Friday, April 13, being Good Friday, I went to St. Clement's Church with him as usual. There I saw again his old fellow-collegian, Edwards, to whom I said, 'I think, sir, Dr. Johnson and you meet only at church.' 'Sir,' said he, it is the best place we can meet in, except Heaven, and I hope we shall meet there too.' Dr. Johnson told me that there was very little communication between Edwards and him, after their unexpected renewal of acquaintance. 'But,' said he, smiling, 'he met me once, and said, “I am told you have written a very pretty book called the Rambler.' I was unwilling that he should leave the world in total darkness, and sent him a set.'

Mr. Berenger visited him to-day, and was very pleasing. We talked of an evening society for conversation at a house in town, of which we were all members, but of which Johnson said, 'It will never do, sir. There is nothing served about there, neither tea, nor coffee, nor lemonade, nor anything whatever; and depend upon it, sir, a man does not love to go to a place from whence he comes out exactly as he went in.' I endeavoured, for argument's sake, to maintain that men of learning and talents might have very good intellectual society, without the aid of any little gratifications of the senses. Berenger joined with Johnson, and said that without these any meeting would be dull and insipid. He would therefore have all the slight refreshments; nay, it would not be amiss to have some cold meat and a bottle of wine upon a sideboard. 'Sir,' said Johnson to me with an air of triumph, 'Mr, Berenger knows the world. Everybody loves to have good things furnished to them without any trouble. I told Mrs. Thrale once, that as she did not choose to have card-tables, she should have a profusion of the best sweetmeats, and she would be sure to have company enough to come to her.' I agreed with my illustrious friend upon this subject; for it has pleased GOD to make man a composite animal, and where there is nothing to refresh the body, the mind will languish.

On Sunday, April 15, being Easter Day, after solemn worship in St. Paul's Church, I found him alone; Dr. Scott, of the Commons, came in. He talked of its having been said, that Addison wrote some of his best papers in the Spectator when warm with wine. Dr. Johnson did not seem willing to admit this. Dr. Scott, as a confirmation of it, related that Blackstone, a sober man, composed his Commentaries with a bottle of port before him; and found his mind invigorated and supported, in the fatigue of his great work, by a temperate use of it.

I told him, that in a company where I had lately been, a desire was expressed to know his authority for the shocking story of Addison's sending an execution into Steele's house, 'Sir,' said he, 'it is generally known; it is known to all who are acquainted with the literary history

of that period: it is as well known as that he wrote Cato.' Mr. Thomas Sheridan once defended Addison to me by alleging that he did it in order to cover Steele's goods from other creditors, who were going to seize them.

We talked of the difference between the mode of education at Oxford, and that in those colleges where instruction is chiefly conveyed by lectures. JOHNSON: 'Lectures were once useful; but now, when all can read, and books are so numerous, lectures are unnecessary. If your attention fails, and you miss a part of the lecture, it is lost; you cannot go back as you do upon a book.' Dr. Scott agreed with him. 'But yet,' said I, 'Dr. Scott, you yourself gave lectures at Oxford.' He smiled. 'You laughed,' then said I, 'at those who came to you.'

Dr. Scott left us, and soon afterwards we went to dinner. Our company consisted of Mrs. Williams, Mrs. Desmoulins, Mr. Levett, Mr. Allen, the printer [Mr. Macbean], and Mrs, Hall, sister of the Reverend Mr. John Wesley, and resembling him, as I thought, both in figure and manJohnson produced now, for the first time, some handsome silver salvers, which he told me he had bought fourteen years ago; so it was a great day. I was not a little amused by observing Allen perpetually struggling to talk in the manner of Johnson, like the little frog in the fable blowing himself up to resemble the stately

ner.

ox.

I mentioned a kind of religious Robin Hood Society, which met every Sunday evening at Coachmakers' Hall, for free debate; and that the subject for this night was, the text which relates, with other miracles which happened at our Saviour's death, And the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after His resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.' Mrs. Hall said it was a very curious subject, and she should like to hear it discussed. JOHNSON (somewhat warmly): One would not go to such a place to hear it ; one would not be seen in such a place to give countenance to such a meeting.' I, however, resolved that I would go. But, sir,' said she to Johnson, I should like to hear you discuss it.' He seemed reluctant to engage in it. She talked of the resurrection of the human race in general, and maintained that we shall be raised with the same bodies. JOHNSON: 'Nay, madam, we see that it is not to be the same body; for the Scripture uses the illustration of grain sown, and we know that the grain which grows is not the same with what is sown. You cannot suppose that we shall rise with a diseased body; it is enough if there be such a sameness as to distinguish identity of person.' She seemed desirous. of knowing more, but he left the question in obscurity.

Of apparitions he observed, 'A total disbelief of them is adverse to the opinion of the exist

ence of the soul between death and the last day; the question simply is, whether departed spirits ever have the power of making themselves perceptible to us. A man who thinks he has seen an apparition, can only be convinced himself; his authority will not convince another; and his conviction, if rational, must be founded on being told something which cannot be known but by supernatural means.'

He mentioned a thing as not unfrequent, of which I had never heard before,-being called, that is, hearing one's name pronounced by the voice of a known person, at a great distance, far beyond the possibility of being reached by any sound uttered by human organs. An acquaintance, on whose veracity I can depend, told me, that walking home one evening to Kilmarnock, he heard himself called from a wood, by the voice of a brother who had gone to America; and the next packet brought accounts of that brother's death. Macbean asserted that this inexplicable calling was a thing very well known. Dr. Johnson said, that one day at Oxford, as he was turning the key of his chamber, he heard his mother distinctly call-Sam. She was then at Lichfield; but nothing ensued. This phenomenon is, I think, as wonderful as any other mysterious fact, which many people are very slow to believe, or rather, indeed, reject with an obstinate contempt.

Some time after this, upon his making a remark which escaped my attention, Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Hall were both together striving to answer him. He grew angry, and called out loudly, 'Nay, when you both speak at once it is intolerable.' But checking himself, and softening, he said, 'This one may say, though you are ladies.' Then he brightened into gay humour, and addressed them in the words of one of the songs in The Beggars' Opera:

But two at a time there's no mortal can bear." 'What, sir,' said I, 'are you going to turn Captain Macheath?' There was something as pleasantly ludicrous in this scene as can be imagined. The contrast between Macheath, Polly, and Lucy-and Dr. Samuel Johnson; blind, peevish Mrs. Williams; and lean, lank, preaching Mrs. Hall, was exquisite.

I stole away to Coachmakers' Hall, and heard the difficult text of which we had talked, discussed with great decency and some intelligence by several speakers. There was a difference of opinion as to the appearance of ghosts in modern times, though the arguments for it, supported by Mr. Addison's authority, preponderated. The immediate subject of debate was embarrassed by the bodies of the saints having been said to rise, and by the question what became of them afterwards: did they return again to their graves, or were they translated to heaven? Only one evangelist mentions the fact (Matthew, xxvii. 52, 53), and the commentators whom I

have looked at do not make the passage clear. There is, however, no occasion for our understanding it further than to know that it was one of the extraordinary manifestations of divine power, which accompanied the most important event that ever happened.

CHAPTER LIV.

1781.

ON Friday, April 20, I spent with Johnson one of the happiest days that I remember to have enjoyed in the whole course of my life. Mrs. Garrick, whose grief for the loss of her husband was, I believe, as sincere as wounded affection and admiration could produce, had this day, for the first time since his death, a select party of his friends to dine with her. The company was, Miss Hannah More, who lived with her, and whom she called her chaplain; Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Dr. Burney, Dr. Johnson, and myself. We found ourselves very elegantly entertained at her house in the Adelphi, where I have passed many a pleasing hour with him who gladdened life.' She looked well, talked of her husband with complacency, and while she cast her eyes on his portrait, which hung over the chimney-piece, said that 'death was now the most agreeable object to her.' The very semblance of David Garrick was cheering. Mr. Beauclerk, with happy propriety, inscribed under that fine portrait of him, which by Lady Diana's kindness is now the property of my friend Mr. Langton, the following passage from his beloved Shakspeare :

-A merrier man,

Within the limit of becoming mirth, I never spent an hour's talk withal. His eye begets occasion for his wit; For every object that the one doth catch, The other turns to a mirth-moving jest ; Which his fair tongue (Conceit's expositor) Delivers in such apt and gracious words, That aged ears play truant at his tales, And younger hearings are quite ravished, So sweet and voluble is his discourse.'1 We were all in fine spirits; and I whispered to Mrs. Boscawen, 'I believe this is as much as can be made of life.' In addition to a splendid entertainment, we were regaled with Lichfield ale, which had a peculiar appropriate value. Sir Joshua, and Dr. Burney, and I, drank cordially of it to Dr. Johnson's health; and though he would not join us, he as cordially answered, 'Gentlemen, I wish you all as well as you do me.'

The general effect of this day dwells upon my mind in fond remembrance; but I do not find much conversation recorded. What I have preserved shall be faithfully given.

1 Love's Labour Lost, Act ii. sc. 1.