Sir Joshua told me a pleasant characteristical anecdote of Johnson, about the time of their first acquaintance. When they were one evening together at the Miss Cotterells', the then Duchess of Argyle and another lady of high rank came in. Johnson thinking that the Miss Cotterells were too much engrossed by them, and that he and his friend were neglected, as low company of whom they were somewhat ashamed, grew angry; and resolving to shock their supposed pride, by making their great visitors imagine that his friend and he were low indeed, he addressed himself in a loud tone to Mr. Reynolds, saying, 'How much do you think you and I could get in a week, if we were to work as hard as we could?'-as if they had been common mechanics.

His acquaintance with Bennet Langton, Esq., of Langton, in Lincolnshire, another muchvalued friend, commenced soon after the conclusion of his Rambler; which that gentleman, then a youth, had read with so much admiration, that he came to London chiefly with a view of endeavouring to be introduced to its author. By a fortunate chance, he happened to take lodgings in a house where Mr. Levett frequently visited; and having mentioned his wish to his landlady, she introduced him to Mr. Levett, who readily obtained Johnson's permission to bring Mr. Langton to him; as, indeed, Johnson, during the whole course of his life, had no shyness, real or affected, but was easy of access to all who were properly recommended, and even wished to see numbers at his letée, as his morning circle of company might with strict propriety be called. Mr. Langton was exceedingly surprised when the sage first appeared. He had not received the smallest intimation of his figure, dress, or manner. From perusing his writings, he fancied he should see a decent, well-dressed, in short, a remarkably decorous philosopher; instead of which, down from his bed-chamber about noon, came, as newly risen, a huge uncouth figure, with a little dark wig which scarcely covered his head, and his clothes hanging loose about him. But his conversation was so rich, so animated, and so forcible, and his religious and political notions so congenial with those in which Langton had been educated, that he conceived for him that veneration and attachment which he ever preserved. Johnson was not the less ready to love Mr. Langton for his being of a very ancient family; for I have heard him say, with pleasure, Langton, sir, has a grant of free-warren from Henry the Second; and Cardinal Stephen Langton, in King John's reign, was of this family.'

Mr. Langton afterwards went to pursue his studies at Trinity College, Oxford, where he formed an acquaintance with his fellow-student, Mr. Topham Beauclerk; who, though their opinions and modes of life were so different,

that it seemed utterly improbable that they should at all agree, had so ardent a love of literature, so acute an understanding, such elegance of manners, and so well discerned the excellent qualities of Mr. Langton, a gentleman eminent not only for worth and learning, but for an inexhaustible fund of entertaining conversation, that they became intimate friends.

Johnson, soon after this acquaintance began, passed a considerable time at Oxford. He at first thought it strange that Langton should associate so much with one who had the character of being loose both in his principles and practice; but by degrees he himself was fascinated. Mr. Beauclerk's being of the St. Alban's family, and having in some particulars a resemblance to Charles the Second, contributed, in Johnson's imagination, to throw a lustre upon his other qualities; and in a short time, the moral, pious Johnson, and the gay, dissipated Beauclerk, were companions. What a coalition!' said Garrick when he heard of this; 'I shall have my old friend to bail out of the Round-house.' But I can bear testimony that it was a very agreeable association. Beauclerk was too polite, and valued learning and wit too much, to offend Johnson by sallies of infidelity or licentiousness; and Johnson delighted in the good qualities of Beauclerk, and hoped to correct the evil. Innumerable were the scenes in which Johnson was amused by these young men. Beauclerk could take more liberty with him than anybody with whom I ever saw him; but, on the other hand, Beauclerk was not spared by his respectable companion when reproof was proper. Beauclerk had such a propensity to satire, that at one time Johnson said to him, 'You never open your mouth but with intention to give pain; and you have often given me pain, not from the power of what you said, but from seeing your intention.' At another time, applying to him, with a slight alteration, a line of Pope, he said,

'Thy love of folly, and thy scorn of fools. Everything thou dost shows the one, and everything thou say'st the other.' At another time he said to him, 'Thy body is all vice, and thy mind all virtue.' Beauclerk not seeming to relish the compliment, Johnson said, 'Nay, sir, Alexander the Great, marching in triumph into Babylon, could not have desired to have had more said to him.'

Johnson was some time with Beauclerk at his house at Windsor, where he was entertained with experiments in natural philosophy. One Sunday, when the weather was very fine, Beauclerk enticed him, insensibly, to saunter about all the morning. They went into a churchyard in the time of divine service, and Johnson laid himself down at his ease upon one of the tombstones. 'Now, sir,' said Beauclerk, you are like Hogarth's Idle Apprentice.' When John

another hand, my thoughts necessarily fixed upon you, whose fund of literature will enable you to assist them, with very little interruption of your studies.

'They desire you to engage to furnish one paper a month, at two guineas a paper, which you may very readily perform. We have considered that a paper should consist of pieces of imagination, pictures of life, and disquisitions of literature. The part which depends on the imagination is very well supplied, as you will find when you read the paper; for descriptions of life, there is now a treaty almost made with an author and authoress; and the province of criticism and literature they are very desirous to assign to the commentator on Virgil.

14

'I hope this proposal will not be rejected, and that the next post will bring us your compliance. I speak as one of the fraternity, though I have no part in the paper, beyond now and then a motto; but two of the writers are my particular friends, and hope the pleasure of seeing a third united to them will not be denied to, dear sir, your most obedient and most humble servant,

'SAM. JOHNSON.'

The consequence of this letter was, Dr. Warton's enriching the collection with several admirable essays.

Johnson's saying, 'I have no part in the paper, beyond now and then a motto,' may seem inconsistent with his being the author of the papers marked T. But he had at this time written only one number; and, besides, even at any after

It is not improbable that the author and authoress, with whom a treaty was almost made, for descriptions of life,' and who are mentioned in a manner that seems to indicate some connection between them, were Henry, and his sister Sally, Felding, as she was then popularly called. Fielding had previously been a periodical essayist, and certainly was well acquainted with life in all its varieties, more especially within the precincts of London; and his sister was a lively and ingenious writer. To this notion it perhaps may be objected, that no papers in the Adventurer are known to be their productions. But it should be remembered, that of several of the essays in that work, the authors are unknown; and some of these may have been written by the persons here supposed to be alluded to. Nor would the objection be decisive, even if it were ascertained that neither of them contributed anything to the Adventurer; for the treaty above mentioned might afterwards have been broken off. The negotiator, doubtless, was Hawkesworth, and not Johnson. Fielding was at this time in the highest reputation; having in 1751 produced his Amelia, of which the whole impression was Boll off on the day of its publication.—MALONE.

period he might have used the same expression, considering it as a point of honour not to own them; for Mrs. Williams told me, that 'as he had given those essays to Dr. Bathurst, who sold them at two guineas each, he never would own them; nay, he used to say he did not write them; but the fact was, that he dictated them while Bathurst wrote.' I read to him Mrs. Williams's account: he smiled, and said nothing.

I am not quite satisfied with the casuistry by which the productions of one person are thus passed upon the world for the productions of another. I allow that not only knowledge, but powers and qualities of mind, may be communicated; but the actual effect of individual exertion never can be transferred, with truth, to any other than its own original cause. One person's child may be made the child of another person by adoption, as among the Romans, or by the ancient Jewish mode of a wife having children born to her upon her knees, by her handmaid. But these were children in a different sense from that of nature. It was clearly understood that they were not of the blood of their nominal parents. So in literary children, an author may give the profits and fame of his composition to another man, but cannot make that other the real author. A Highland gentleman, a younger branch of a family, once consulted me if he could not validly purchase the Chieftainship of

I received several years ago, but do not precisely remember from whom I derived it. I believe, however, my informer was Dr. Warton.

With respect to No. 39, on Sleep, which our author has ascribed to Johnson, even if it were written by him, it would not be inconsistent with his statement to Dr. Warton; for it appeared on March 20th, near a fortnight after the date of Johnson's letter to that gentleman. But on considering it attentively, though the style bears a strong resemblance to that of Johnson, I believe it was written by his friend Dr. Bathurst, and perhaps touched in a few places by Johnson. Mr. Boswell has observed that this paper not only has the general texture and colour of his style, but the authors with whom he was peculiarly conversant are readily introduced in it in cursory allusion." Now the authors mentioned in that paper are, Fontenelle, Milton, Ramazzini, Madlle. de Scuderi, Swift, Homer, Barretier, Statius, Cowley, and Sir Thomas Browne. With many of these, doubtless, Johnson was particularly conversant; but I doubt whether he would have characterized the expression quoted from Swift as elegant; and with the works of Ramazzini it is very improbable that he should have been acquainted. Ramazzini was a celebrated physician, who died at Padua in 1714, at the age of 81; with whose writings Dr. Bathurst may be supposed to have been conversant. So also with respect to Cowley: Johnson, without doubt, had read his Latin poem on Plants, but Bathurst's profession probably led him to read it with more attention than his friend had given to it; and Cowley's eulogy on the Poppy would more readily occur to the naturalist and the physician than to a more general reader. I believe, however, that the last paragraph of the paper on Sleep, in which Sir Thomas Browne is quoted to show the propriety of prayer before we lie down to rest, was added by Johnson.-MALONE.

his family from the Chief, who was willing to sell it. I told him it was impossible for him to acquire, by purchase, a right to be a different person from what he really was; for that the right of Chieftainship attached to the blood of primogeniture, and therefore was incapable of being transferred. I added, that though Esau sold his birthright, or the advantages belonging to it, he still remained the first-born of his parents; and that whatever agreement a chief might make with any of the clan, the Herald's Office could not admit of the metamorphosis, or with any decency attest that the younger was the elder but I did not convince the worthy gentleman.

Johnson's papers in the Adventurer are very similar to those of the Rambler; but being rather more varied in their subjects,' and being mixed with essays by other writers, upon topics more generally attractive than even the most elegant ethical discourses, the sale of the work at first was more extensive. Without meaning, however, to depreciate the Adventurer, I must observe, that as the value of the Rambler came in the progress of time to be better known, it grew upon the public estimation, and that its sale has far exceeded that of any other periodical papers since the reign of Queen Anne.

Magazine for February. In biography there can be no question that he excelled, beyond all who have attempted that species of composition; upon which, indeed, he set the highest value. To the minute selection of characteristical circumstances, for which the ancients were remarkable, he added a philosophical research, and the most perspicuous and energetic language. Cave was certainly a man of estimable qualities, and was eminently diligent and successful in his own business, which doubtless entitled him to respect. But he was peculiarly fortunate in being recorded by Johnson; who, of the narrow life of a printer and publisher, without any digressions or adventitious circumstances, has made an interesting and agreeable narrative.

The Dictionary, we may believe, afforded Johnson full occupation this year. As it approached to its conclusion, he probably worked with redoubled vigour, as seamen increase their exertion and alacrity when they have a near prospect of their haven.

Lord Chesterfield, to whom Johnson had paid the high compliment of addressing to his lordship the plan of his Dictionary, had behaved to him in such a manner as to excite his contempt and indignation. The world has been for many

April 3, 1753. I began the second vol. of my Dictionary, room being left in the first for Preface, Grammar, and History, none of them yet begun.

O God, who hast hitherto supported me, enable me to proceed in this labour, and in the whole task of my present state; that when I shall render up at the last day an account of the talent committed to me, I may receive pardon, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.'

He this year favoured Mrs. Lennox with a Dedication [*] to the Earl of Orrery of her Shakspeare Illustrated.2

CHAPTER X.

1754-1755.

IN 1754 I can trace nothing published by Johnson, except his numbers of the Adventurer and the 'Life of Edward Cave' [*] in the Gentleman's

1 Dr. Johnson lowered and somewhat disguised his style in writing the Adventurers, in order that his papers might pass for those of Dr. Bathurst, to whom he consigned the profits. This was Hawkesworth's opinion.-BURNEY.

2 Two of Johnson's letters addressed to Samuel Richardson, author of Clarissa, etc., the former dated March 9, 1750-1, the other September 26, 1753, are preserved in Richardson's Correspondence, Svo, 1804, vol. v. pp. 281-284. In the latter of these letters Johnson suggested to Richardson the propriety of making an index to his three works: but while I am writing,' he adds, an objection arises: such an Index to the

as confidently repeated with additional circumstances, that a sudden disgust was taken by Johnson upon occasion of his having been one day kept long in waiting in his lordship's antechamber, for which the reason assigned was, that he had company with him; and that at last, when the door opened, out walked Colley Cibber; and that Johnson was so violently provoked when he found for whom he had been so long excluded, that he went away in a passion, and never would return. I remember having mentioned this story to George Lord Lyttleton, who told me he was very intimate with Lord Chesterfield; and holding it as a well-known truth, defended Lord Chesterfield by saying, that 'Cibber, who had been introduced familiarly by the back-stairs, had probably not been there above ten minutes.' It may seem strange even to entertain a doubt concerning a story so long and so widely current, and thus implicitly adopted, if not sanctioned, by the authority

which I have mentioned; but Johnson himself assured me that there was not the least founthree would look like the preclusion of a fourth, to which I will never contribute; for it I cannot benefit mankind, I hope never to injure them.' Richardson, however, adopted the hint; for in 1755 he published in octavo, A Collection of the Moral and Instructive Sentiments, Maxims, Cautions, and Reflections contained in the Histories of Pamela,'' Clarissa,' and Sir Charles Grandison,' digested under proper heads.

It is remarkable, that both to this book, and to the first two volumes of Clarissa, is prefixed a preface, by a friend. The 'friend,' in this latter instance, was the celebrated Dr. Warburton. -MALONE.

dation for it. He told me that there never was any particular incident which produced a quarrel between Lord Chesterfield and him; but that his lordship's continued neglect was the reason why he resolved to have no connection with him.

When the Dictionary was upon the eve of publication, Lord Chesterfield, who, it is said, had flattered himself with expectations that Johnson would dedicate the work to him, attempted, in a courtly manner, to soothe and insinuate himself with the sage, conscious, as it should seem, of the cold indifference with which he had treated its learned author; and further attempted to conciliate him, by writing two papers in the World in recommendation of the work; and it must be confessed that they contain some studied compliments, so finely turned, that if there had been no previous offence, it is probable that Johnson would have been highly delighted. Praise, in general, was pleasing to him; but by praise from a man of rank and elegant accomplishments he was peculiarly gratified. His lordship says:

'I think the public in general, and the republic of letters in particular, are greatly obliged to Mr. Johnson for having undertaken and executed so great and desirable a work. Per fection is not to be expected from man; but if we are to judge by the various works of Johnson already published, we have good reason to believe that he will bring this as near to perfection as any man could do. The plan of it, which he published some years ago, seems to me a proof of it. Nothing can be more rationally imagined, or more accurately and elegantly expressed. I therefore recommend the previous perusal of it to all those who intend to buy the Dictionary, and who, I suppose, are all those who can afford it..

'It must be owned that our language is at present in a state of anarchy, and hitherto, perhaps, it may not have been the worse for it. During our free and open trade, many words and expressions have been imported, adopted, and naturalized from other languages, which have greatly enriched our own. Let it still preserve what real strength and beauty it may have borrowed from others; but let it not, like the Tarpeian maid, be overwhelmed and crushed by unnecessary ornaments. The time for discrimination seems to be now come. Toleration, adoption, and naturalization have run their length. Good order and authority are now necessary. But where shall we find them, and at the same time the obedience due to them? We must have recourse to the old Roman expedient in times of confusion, and choose a dictator. Upon this principle, I give my vote for Mr. Johnson, to fill that great and arduous post; and I hereby declare, that I make a total surrender of all my rights and privileges in the English language, as a free-born British subject,

to the said Mr. Johnson, during the term of his dictatorship. Nay, more--I will not only obey him like an old Roman, as my dictator; but, like a modern Roman, I will implicitly believe in him as my Pope, and hold him to be infallible while in the chair, but no longer. More than this he cannot well require; for I presume that obedience can never be expected, when there is neither terror to enforce, nor interest to invite it. . . .

'But a Grammar, a Dictionary, and a History of our language, through its several stages, were still wanting at home, and importunately called for from abroad. Mr. Johnson's labours will now, I dare say, very fully supply that want, and greatly contribute to the further spreading of our language in other countries. Learners were discouraged by finding no standard to resort to, and consequently thought it incapable of any. They will now be undeceived and encouraged.'

This courtly device failed of its effect. Johnson, who thought that 'all was false and hollow,' despised the honeyed words, and was even indignant that Lord Chesterfield should for a moment imagine that he could be the dupe of such an artifice. His expression to me concerning Lord Chesterfield upon this occasion was, 'Sir, after making great professions, he had for many years taken no notice of me; but when my Dictionary was coming out, he fell a scribbling in the World about it. Upon which I wrote him a letter expressed in civil terms, but such as might show him that I did not mind what he said or wrote, and that I had done with him.'

He

This is that celebrated letter of which so much has been said, and about which curiosity has been so long excited, without being gratified. I for many years solicited Johnson to favour me with a copy of it, that so excellent a composition might not be lost to posterity. delayed from time to time to give it me;1 till at last, in 1781, when we were on a visit at Mr.` Dilly's, at Southill, in Bedfordshire, he was pleased to dictate it to me from memory. He afterwards found among his papers a copy of it, which he had dictated to Mr. Baretti, with its title and corrections, in his own handwriting. This he gave to Mr. Langton; adding, that if it were to come into print, he wished it to be from

1 Dr. Johnson appeared to have had a remarkable delicacy with respect to the circulation of this letter; for Dr. Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury, informs me that, having many years ago pressed him to be allowed to read it to the second Lord Hardwicke, who was very desirous to hear it (promising, at the same time, that no copy of it should be taken), Johnson seemed much pleased that it had attracted the attention of a noble

man of such a respectable character; but after pausing some time, declined to comply with the request, saying with a smile, 'No, sir; I have hurt the dog too much already;' or words to that purpose.—BOSWELL.