anger, and you must leave me to catch opportunities, and be assured, dearest dear, that I should have very little enjoyment of that day in which I had neglected any opportunity of doing good to you. I am, dearest madam, your most humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON."]

["TO MRS. LUCY PORTER.

"Bolt-court, Fleet-street, 4th March, 1779.

"MY DEAR LOVE,-Since I heard from you, I sent you a little print, and two barrels of oysters, and I shall have some little books to send you soon.

"I have seen Mr. Pearson, and am pleased to find that he has got a living. I was hurried when he was with me, but had time to hear that my friends were all well.

"Poor Mrs. Adey was, I think, a good woman, and therefore her death is less to be lamented; but it is not pleasant to think how uncertain it is, that, when friends part, they will ever meet again.

"My old complaint of flatulence, and tight and short breath, oppress me heavily. My nights are very restless. I think of consulting the doctor to-morrow.

"This has been a mild winter, for which I hope you have been the better. Take what care you can of yourself, and do not forget to drink. I was somehow or other hindered from coming into the country last summer, but I think of coming this year. I am, dear love, your most humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON."]

["TO MRS. ASTON.

"Bolt-court, Fleet-street, 4th March, 1779.

I please myshall find you

"DEAR MADAM,-Mrs. Gastrell and you are very often in my thoughts, though I do not write so often as might be expected from so much love and so much respect. self with thinking that I shall see you again, and better. But futurity is uncertain: poor David had doubtless many futurities in his head, which death has intercepted-a death, I believe, totally unexpected: he did not in his last hour seem to think his life in danger.

"My old complaints hang heavy on me, and my nights are very uncomfortable and unquiet; and sleepless nights make heavy days. I think to go to my physician, and try what can be done. For why should not I grow better as well as you? "Now you are better, pray, dearest madam, take care of

[Mr. Garrick.-ED.]

VOL. IV.

R

Pearson
MS.

Pemb.

MSS.

Letters, vol. ii. p. 42.

yourself. I hope to come this summer and watch you. It will be a very pleasant journey if I can find you and dear Mrs. Gastrell well.

66

I sent you two barrels of oysters; if you would wish for more, please to send your commands to, madam, your most humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON."]

["TO MRS. THRALE.

"10th March, 1779.

"I will come to see you on Saturday, only let me know whether I must come to the Borough, or am to be taken up here.

"I got my Lives, not yet quite printed, put neatly together, and sent them to the king: what he says of them I know not. If the king is a whig, he will not like them: but is any king a whig?"]

On the 23d of February I had written to him again, complaining of his silence, as I had heard he was ill, and had written to Mr. Thrale for information concerning him and I announced my intention of soon being again in London.

"TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.

"13th March, 1779. "DEAR SIR,-Why should you take such delight to make a bustle, to write to Mr. Thrale that I am negligent, and to Francis to do what is so very unnecessary? Thrale, you may be sure, cared not about it; and I shall spare Francis the trouble, by ordering a set both of the Lives and Poets to dear Mrs. Boswell, in acknowledgment of her marmalade. Persuade her to accept them, and accept them kindly. If I thought she would receive them scornfully, I would send them to Miss Boswell, who, I hope, has yet none of her mamma's ill-will

to me.

'I would send sets of Lives, four volumes, to some other friends, to Lord Hailes first. His second volume lies by my bed-side; a book surely of great labour, and to every just thinker of great delight. Write me word to whom I shall send besides. Would it please Lord Auchinleck? Mrs. Thrale waits in the coach. I am, dear sir, &c. "SAM. JOHNSON."

He sent a set elegantly bound and gilt, which was received as a very handsome present.-BOSWELL.

This letter crossed me on the road to London, where I arrived on Monday, March 15, and next morning, at a late hour, found Dr. Johnson sitting over his tea, attended by Mrs. Desmoulins, Mr. Levett, and a clergyman, who had come to submit some poetical pieces to his revision. It is wonderful what a number and variety of writers, some of them even unknown to him, prevailed on his good-nature to look over their works, and suggest corrections and improvements. My arrival interrupted, for a little while, the important business of this true representative of Bayes; upon its being resumed, I found that the subject under immediate consideration was a translation, yet in manuscript, of the "Carmen Seculare" of Horace, which had this year been set to musick, and performed as a publick entertainment in London, for the joint benefit of Monsieur Philidor and Signor Baretti. When Johnson had done reading, the authour asked him bluntly, “If upon the whole it was a good translation ?" Johnson, whose regard for truth was uncommonly strict, seemed to be puzzled for a moment what answer to make, as he certainly could not honestly commend the performance with exquisite address he evaded the question thus, "Sir, I do not say that it may not be made a very good translation." Here nothing whatever in favour of the performance was affirmed, and yet the writer was not shocked. A printed "Ode to the Warlike Genius of Britain" came next in review. The bard' was a lank bony figure, with short black hair; he was writhing himself in agitation,

[This was a Mr. Tasker. Mr. D'Israeli informs the Editor, that this portrait is so accurately drawn, that, being, some years after the publication of this work, at a watering-place on the coast of Devon, he was visited by Mr. Tasker, whose name, however, he did not then know, but was so struck with his resemblance to Boswell's picture, that he asked him whether he had not had an interview with Dr. Johnson, and it appeared that he was indeed the author of "The Warlike Genius of Britain."-ED.]

while Johnson read, and, showing his teeth in a grin of earnestness, exclaimed in broken sentences, and in a keen sharp tone, "Is that poetry, sir?-Is it Pindar?" JOHNSON. "Why, sir, there is here a great deal of what is called poetry." Then, turning to me, the poet cried, "My muse has not been long upon the town, and (pointing to the Ode) it trembles under the hand of the great critick." Johnson, in a tone of displeasure, asked him, "Why do you praise Anson ?" I did not trouble him by asking his reason for this question'. He proceeded:-"Here is an errour, sir; you have made Genius feminine." "Palpable,

2

sir (cried the enthusiast); I know it. But (in a lower tone) it was to pay a compliment to the Duchess of Devonshire, with which her grace was pleased. She is walking across Coxheath in the military uniform, and I suppose her to be the Genius of Britain." JOHNSON. "Sir, you are giving a reason for it; but that will not make it right. You may have a reason why two and two should make five; but they will still make but four."

Although I was several times with him in the course of the following days, such it seems were my occupations, or such my negligence, that I have preserved no memorial of his conversation till Friday, March 26, when I visited him. He said he expected to be attacked on account of his "Lives of the Poets." "However," said he, "I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an authour is to be silent as to his works. An assault upon a town is a bad thing; but starving it is still

[He disliked Lord Anson probably from local politics. On one occasion he visited Lord Anson's seat, and although, as he confessed, "well received and kindly treated, he, with the true gratitude of a wit, ridiculed the master of the house before he had left it half an hour." In the grounds there is a temple of the winds, on which he made the following epigram:

Gratum animum laudo; Qui debuit omnia ventis,

Quam bene ventorum, surgere templa jubet!-Piozzi Anec. p. 55.-ED.] 2 [Where there was a camp at this period; see ante, p. 233.-ED.]

worse; an assault may be unsuccessful, you may have more men killed than you kill; but if you starve the town, you are sure of victory."

p. 140.

[Dr. Johnson was famous for disregarding public Piozzi, abuse. When the people criticised and answered his pamphlets, papers, &c. he would say: "Why now, these fellows are only advertising my book: it is surely better a man should be abused than forgotten."]

Talking of a friend' of ours associating with persons of very discordant principles and characters; I said he was a very universal man, quite a man of the world. JOHNSON. "Yes, sir; but one may be so much a man of the world, as to be nothing in the world. I remember a passage in Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield,' which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge. I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.'" BosWELL. "That was a fine passage." JOHNSON. "Yes, sir: there was another fine passage too, which he struck out: 'When I was a young man, being anxious to distinguish myself, I was perpetually starting new propositions. But I soon gave this over; for I found that generally what was new was false."" I said I did not like to sit with people of whom I had not a good opinion. JOHNSON. "But you must not indulge your delicacy too much, or you will be a téte-à-tête man all your life."

["DR. JOHNSON TO MRS. THRALE.

18th March, 1779. "On Monday I came late to Mrs. Vesey. Mrs. Montagu was there; I called for the print3, and got good words. The evening was not brilliant, but I had thanks for my company.

[Probably Sir Joshua Reynolds; see ante, p. 117.-ED.]

2 Dr. Burney, in a note introduced in a former page, has mentioned this circumstance, concerning Goldsmith, as communicated to him by Dr. Johnson, not recollecting that it occurred here. His remark, however, is not wholly superfluous, as it ascertains that the words which Goldsmith had put into the mouth of a fictitious character in the "Vicar of Wakefield," and which, as we learn from Dr. Johnson, he afterwards expunged, related, like many other passages in his novel, to himself.-MALONE.

3Mrs. Montagu's portrait.-ED.]

Letters,

vol. ii. P. 43.