no injury. There is an ingenious scheme to save a day's work, or part of a day, utterly defeated. Then what avails it to be wise? The plain and the artful man must both do their own work. But I think I have got a life of Dr. Young '."] 2 In the course of this month my brother David waited upon Dr. Johnson, with the following letter of introduction, which I had taken care should be lying ready on his arrival in London. "TO DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. "Edinburgh, 29th April, 1780. “MY DEAR SIR,-This will be delivered to you by my brother David on his return from Spain. You will be glad to see the man who vowed to stand by the old castle of Auchinleck with heart, purse, and sword;' that romantick family solemnity. devised by me, of which you and I talked with complacency upon the spot. I trust that twelve years of absence have not lessened his feudal attachment, and that you will find him worthy of being introduced to your acquaintance. I have the honour to be, with affectionate veneration, my dear sir, your most faithful humble servant, "JAMES BOSWELL." Johnson received him very politely, and has thus mentioned him in a letter to Mrs. Thrale 3: "21st June, 1780. "I have had with me a brother of Boswell's, a Spanish merchant, whom the war has driven from his residence at Valencia. He is gone to see his friends, and will find Scotland but a sorry place after twelve years' residence in a happier climate. He is a very agreeable man, and speaks no Scotch." Letters, vol. ii. p. 163. [Dr. Johnson had, for the last year, felt some al- ED. leviation of a troublesome disease which had long 1 1 [From Mr. (afterwards Sir) Herbert Croft. He died in 1805.—En.] 2 Now settled in London.-BOSWELL. [As Inspector of Seamen's Wills in the Navy Pay Office, from which situation he retired in 1823, and died in 1826, ætat. 76. ED.] 3 Mrs. Piozzi has omitted the name, she best knows why.-BosWELL. [Mrs. Piozzi (acting with more delicacy, both to him and others, than Mr. Boswell himself showed), has almost every where omitted names: she feared, perhaps, that Mr. Boswell might not like to see his name coupled with the designation of Scotland as a "sorry place."-Ed.] VOL. IV. Y ED. Pr. and Letters, vol. ii. P 177. affected him; this relief he thus gratefully and devoutly acknowledged: Sunday, June 18.-In the morning of this day last year, I perceived the remission of those convulsions in my breast which had distressed me for more than twenty years. I returned thanks at church for the mercy granted me, which has now continued a year.] ["DR. JOHNSON TO MRS. THRALE. "14th August, 1780. "I hope you have no design of stealing away to Italy before the election, nor of leaving me behind you; though I am not only seventy but seventy-one. Could not you let me lose a year in round numbers? Sweetly, sweetly, sings Dr. Swift, "Some dire misfortune to portend, No enemy can match a friend.' But what if I am seventy-two? I remember Sulpitius says of Saint Martin (now that's above your reading)—Est animus victor annorum, et senectuti cedere nescius. Match me that among your own folks. If you try to plague me, I shall tell you that, according to Galen, life begins to decline from thirty-five 1."] "TO DR. BEATTIE, AT ABERDEEN. 2 "Bolt-court, Fleet-street, 21st August, 1780. "SIR,-More years than I have any delight to reckon have past since you and I saw one another: of this, however, there is no reason for making any reprehensory complaint:—Sic fata ferunt. But methinks there might pass some small interchange of regard between us. If you say that I ought to have written, I now write and I write to tell you, that I have much kindness for you and Mrs. Beattie; and that I wish your health better, and your life long. Try change of air, and come a few degrees southwards. A softer climate may do you both good. Winter is coming in; and London will be warmer, and gayer, and busier, and more fertile of amusement than Aberdeen. "My health is better, but that will be little in the balance when I tell you that Mrs. Montagu has been very ill, and is, I 1 [It may be surmised that Mrs. Thrale, at her last birth-day, was thirty-five : see ante, vol. iii. p. 463.—ED.] 2 I had been five years absent from London.-BEATTIE. doubt, now but weakly. Mr. Thrale has been very dangerously disordered; but is much better, and I hope will totally recover. He has withdrawn himself from business the whole summer. Sir Joshua and his sister are well; and Mr. Davies has got great success as an authour', generated by the corruption of a bookseller. More news I have not to tell you, and therefore you must be contented with hearing, what I know not whether you much wish to hear 3, that I am, sir, your most humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON." "TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. "London, 21st August, 1780. "DEAR SIR,-I find you have taken one of your fits of taciturnity, and have resolved not to write till you are written to: it is but a peevish humour, but you shall have your way. "I have sat at home in Bolt-court all the summer, thinking to write the Lives, and a great part of the time only thinking. Several of them, however, are done, and I still think to do the rest. "Mr. Thrale and his family have, since his illness, passed their time first at Bath, and then at Brighthelmstone; but I have been at neither place. I would have gone to Lichfield if I could have had time, and I might have had time if I had been active; but I have missed much, and done little. "In the late disturbances, Mr. Thrale's house and stock were in great danger. The mob was pacified at their first invasion with about fifty pounds in drink and meat; and at their second, were driven away by the soldiers. Mr. Strahan got a garrison into his house, and maintained them a fortnight: he was so frighted, that he removed part of his goods. Mrs. Williams took shelter in the country. "I know not whether I shall get a ramble this autumn. It is now about the time when we were travelling. I have, how Meaning his entertaining "Memoirs of David Garrick, Esq." of which Johnson (as Davies informed me) wrote the first sentence; thus giving, as it were, the key-note to the performance. It is, indeed, very characteristical of its authour, beginning with a maxim, and proceeding to illustrate. "All excellence has a right to be recorded. I shall, therefore, think it superfluous to apologize for writing the life of a man, who, by an uncommon assemblage of private virtues, adorned the highest eminence in a publick profession."—BosWELL. 2 [What the expression "generated by the corruption of a bookseller" means seems not quite clear; perhaps it is an allusion to the generation of a class of insects, as if Davies, from his adversity as a bookseller, had burst into new and gaudier life as an author.-ED.] 3 I wish he had omitted the suspicion expressed here, though I believe he meant nothing but jocularity; for, though he and I differed sometimes in opinion, he well knew how much I loved and revered him.-BEATTIE. Letters, vol. ii. p. 190. ever, better health than I had then, and hope you and I may yet show ourselves on some part of Europe, Asia, or Africa'. In the meantime let us play no trick, but keep each other's kindness by all means in our power. "The bearer of this is Dr. Dunbar of Aberdeen, who has written and published a very ingenious book 2, and who I think has a kindness for me, and will, when he knows you, have a kindness for you. "I suppose your little ladies are grown tall; and your son has become a learned young man. I love them all, and I love your naughty lady, whom I never shall persuade to love me. When the Lives are done, I shall send them to complete her collection, but must send them in paper, as, for want of a pattern, I cannot bind them to fit the rest. I am, sir, yours most affectionately, "SAM. JOHNSON." ["TO MRS. THRALE. "London, 25th August, 1780. “I have not dined out for some time but with Renny or Sir Joshua; and next week Sir Joshua goes to Devonshire, and Renny to Richmond, and I am left by myself. I wish I could say nunquam minus 3, &c., but I am not diligent. "I am afraid that I shall not see Lichfield this year, yet it would please me to show my friends how much better I am grown but I am not grown, I am afraid, less idle; and of idleness I am now paying the fine by having no leisure.”] This year he wrote to a young clergyman' in the country the following very excellent letter, which contains valuable advice to divines in general: "Bolt-court, 30th August, 1780. "DEAR SIR,-Not many days ago Dr. Lawrence showed me It will no doubt be remarked how he avoids the rebellions land of America. This puts me in mind of an anecdote, for which I am obliged to my worthy, social friend, Governour Richard Penn. "At one of Miss E. Hervey's assemblies, Dr. Johnson was following her up and down the room; upon which Lord Abington observed to her, Your great friend is very fond of you; you can go nowhere without him.' Ay,' said she, he would follow me to any part of the world.' Then,' said the earl, ask him to go with you to America.' BOSWELL. This lady was Miss Elizabeth Hervey, daughter of William, brother of Johnson's two friends, Thomas and Henry Hervey. She was born in 1730, and died at a very advanced age, unmarried —En.] 2866 Essays on the History of Mankind.". BOSWELL. 3 [" Never less alone than when alone."-ED.] Probably his friend, the Reverend George Strahan, who published his Prayers and Meditations.-ED.] a letter, in which you make mention of me: I hope, therefore, you will not be displeased that I endeavour to preserve your goodwill by some observations which your letter suggested to me. "You are afraid of falling into some improprieties in the daily service by reading to an audience that requires no exactness. Your fear, I hope, secures you from danger. They who contract absurd habits are such as have no fear. It is impossible to do the same thing very often without some peculiarity of manner: but that manner may be good or bad, and a little care will at least preserve it from being bad: to make it good, there must, I think, be something of natural or casual felicity, which cannot be taught. "Your present method of making your sermons seems very judicious. Few frequent preachers can be supposed to have sermons more their own than yours will be. Take care to register, somewhere or other, the authours from whom your several discourses are borrowed; and do not imagine that you shall always remember, even what, perhaps, you now think it impossible to forget. "My advice, however, is, that you attempt, from time to time, an original sermon; and, in the labour of composition, do not burden your mind with too much at once; do not exact from yourself at one effort of excogitation, propriety of thought and elegance of expression. Invent first, and then embellish. The production of something, where nothing was before, is an act of greater energy than the expansion or decoration of the thing produced. Set down diligently your thoughts as they rise in the first words that occur; and when you have matter you will easily give it form; nor, perhaps, will this method be always necessary; for, by habit, your thoughts and diction will flow together. "The composition of sermons is not very difficult: the divisions not only help the memory of the hearer, but direct the judgment of the writer: they supply sources of invention, and keep every part in its proper place. "What I like least in your letter is your account of the manners of your parish; from which I gather, that it has been long neglected by the parson. The Dean of Carlisle who was then a little rector in Northamptonshire, told me, that it might be discerned whether or no there was a clergyman resident in a parish, by the civil or savage manner of the people. Such a Dr. Percy.-BOSWELL. |