"To avoid all singularity: Bonaventura.1 66 To come in before service, and compose my mind by meditation, or by reading some portions of scripture. Tetty. 66 • If I can hear the sermon, to attend it, unless attention be more troublesome than useful. 66 To consider the act of prayer as a reposal of myself upon God, and a resignation of all into his holy hand." Both in 1764 and 1765 it should seem that he was so busily employed with his edition of Shakspeare, as to have had little leisure for any other literary exertion, or, indeed, even for private correspondence. He did not favour me with a single letter for more than two years, for which it will appear that he afterwards apologised. He was, however, at all times ready to give assistance to his friends, and others, in revising their works, and in writing for them, or greatly improving, their Dedications. In that courtly species of composition no man excelled Dr. Johnson. Though the loftiness of his mind prevented him from ever dedicating in his own person, he wrote a very great number of Dedications for others. Some of these, the persons who were favoured with them are unwilling should be mentioned, from a too anxious apprehension, as I think, that they might be suspected of having received larger assistance; and some, after all the diligence I have bestowed, have escaped my inquiries. He told me, a great many years ago, "he believed he had dedicated to all the Royal Family round;" and it was indifferent to him what was the subject of the work dedicated, provided it were innocent. He once dedicated some music for the German Flute to Edward, Duke of York. In writing Dedications for others, he considered himself as by no means speaking his own sentiments. Notwithstanding his long silence, I never omitted to write to him, when I had any thing worthy of communicating. I generally kept copies of my letters to him, that might have a full view of our correspondence, and never be at a loss to understand any reference in his letters. He kept the greater part of mine very carefully; and a short He was probably proposing to himself the model of this excellent person, who for his piety was named the Seraphic Doctor. time before his death was attentive enough to seal them up in bundles, and ordered them to be delivered to me, which was accordingly done. Amongst them I found one, of which I had not made a copy, and which I own I read with pleasure at the distance of almost twenty years. It is dated November, 1765, at the palace of Pascal Paoli, in Corte, the capital of Corsica, and is full of generous enthusiasm. After giving a sketch of what I had seen and heard in that island, it proceeded thus: "I dare to call this a spirited tour. I dare to challenge your approbation." This letter produced the following answer, which I found on my arrival at Paris. "DEAR SIR, 66 A M. M. BOSWELL. Chez M. Waters, Banquier, à Paris. "Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, Jan. 14, 1766. We will delay till your Apologies are seldom of any use. arrival the reasons, good or bad, which have made me such a sparing and ungrateful correspondent. Be assured, for the present, that nothing has lessened either the esteem or love with which I dismissed you at Harwich. Both have been increased by all that I have been told of you by yourself or others; and when you return, you will return to an unaltered, and, I hope, unalterable friend. "All that you have to fear from me is the vexation of disappointing me. No man loves to frustrate expectations which have been formed in his favour; and the pleasure which I promise myself from your journals and remarks is so great, that perhaps no degree of attention or discernment will be sufficient to afford it. "Come home, however, and take your chance. I long to see you, and to hear you; and hope that we shall not be so long separated again. Come home, and expect such welcome as is due to him, whom a wise and noble curiosity has led, where perhaps no native of this country ever was before. "I have no news to tell you that can deserve your notice; nor would I willingly lessen the pleasure that any novelty may give you at your return. I am afraid we shall find it difficult to keep among us a mind which has been so long feasted with variety. But let us try what esteem and kindness can effect. "As your father's liberality has indulged you with so long a ramble, I doubt not but you will think his sickness, or even his desire to see you, a sufficient reason for hastening your return. The longer we live, and the more we think, the higher value we learn to put on the friendship and tenderness of parents and of friends. Parents we can have but once; and he promises himself too much, who enters life with the expectation of finding many friends. Upon some motive, I hope, that you will be here soon; and am willing to think that it will be an inducement to your return, that it is sincerely desired by, dear Sir, your affectionate humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON." I returned to London in February, and found Dr. Johnson in a good house in Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, in which he had accommodated Miss Williams with an apartment on the ground floor, while Mr. Levett occupied his post in the garret his faithful Francis was still attending upon him. He received me with much kindness. The fragments of our first conversation, which I have preserved, are these: I told him that Voltaire, in a conversation with me, had distinguished Pope and Dryden thus:-"Pope drives a handsome chariot, with a couple of neat, trim nags; Dryden a coach, and six stately horses." JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, the truth is, they both drive coaches and six; but Dryden's horses are either galloping or stumbling; Pope's go at a 1 It is remarkable that Mr. Gray has employed somewhat the same image to characterise Dryden. He, indeed, furnishes his car with but two horses; but they are of "ethereal race: "Behold where Dryden's less presumptuous car Wide o'er the fields of glory bear Two coursers of ethereal race, With necks in thunder clothed, and long resounding pace." Johnson, in the Life of Pope, has made a comparison between him and Dryden, in the spirit of this correction of Voltaire's metaphor. It is one of the most beautiful critical passages in our language, and was probably suggested to Johnson's mind by this conversation, although he did not make use of the same illustration.-Croker. Johnson condemns the image in his Life of Gray. "The car of Dryden," he says, "with his two coursers, has nothing in it peculiar; it is a car in which any other rider may be placed.”—P. Cunningham. steady even trot." He said of Goldsmith's "Traveller," which had been published in my absence, "There has not been so fine a poem since Pope's time." And here it is proper to settle, with authentic precision, what has long floated in public report, as to Johnson's being himself the author of a considerable part of that poem. Much, no doubt, both of the sentiments and expression, were derived from conversation with him;1and it was certainly submitted to his friendly revision: but in the year 1783, he, at my request, marked with a pencil the lines which he had furnished, which are only line 420th : "To stop too fearful, and too faint to go;" : and the concluding ten lines, except the last couplet but one, which I distinguish by the Italic character: "How small of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure! Our own felicity we make or find: With secret course, which no loud storms annoy, Luke's iron crown, and Damien's bed of steel, He added, "These are all of which I can be sure." They bear a small proportion to the whole, which consists of four hundred and thirty-eight verses. Goldsmith, in the couplet which he inserted, mentions Luke as a person well known, and superficial readers have passed it over quite smoothly; while those of more attention have been as much perplexed by Luke as by Lydiat, in "The Vanity of Human Wishes." The truth is, that Goldsmith himself was in a mistake. In the "Respublica Hungarica," there is an account of a desperate rebellion in the year 1514, headed by two brothers of the name of Zeck, George and This rests on no authority whatever, and may well be doubted. The Traveller is a poem which, in a peculiar degree, seems written from the personal observation and feelings of its author.-Croker. Luke. When it was quelled, George, not Luke, was punished, by his head being encircled with a red-hot iron crown; “corona candescente ferreá coronatur.”1 The same severity of torture was exercised on the Earl of Athol, one of the murderers of King James I. of Scotland. Dr. Johnson at the same time favoured me by marking the lines which he furnished to Goldsmith's "Deserted Village," which are only the last four: "That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay, As rocks resist the billows and the sky." Talking of education, "People have now-a-days," said he, "got a strange opinion that everything should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures, except where experiments are to be shown. You may teach chymistry by lectures :-you might teach making of shoes by lectures!" At night I supped with him at the Mitre tavern, that we might renew our social intimacy at the original place of meeting. But there was now a considerable difference in his way of living. Having had an illness, in which he was advised to leave off wine, he had, from that period, continued to abstain from it, and drank only water, or lemonade. I told him that a foreign friend of his, whom I had met with abroad, was so wretchedly perverted to infidelity, that he treated the hopes of immortality with brutal levity; and said, "As man dies like a dog, let him lie like a dog." JOHNSON. "If he dies like a dog, let him lie like a dog." 66 1 Mr. Boswell is in error. The names of the brother rebels were George and Luke Dosa, and they (or at least George) were punished, as stated in the poem. Felicien Zech (properly Zach), was a different person.-John Murray. The alteration therefore which a late Editor of Goldsmith, Mr. Bolton Corney, has made, of Luke into "Zech,” is doubly improper.--P. Cun ningham. 2 Probably the severe fit of hypochondria mentioned antè [p. 6].— Croker. |