[1734.] It is reasonable to suppose, that his having been thus accidentally led to a particular study of the history and manners of Abyssinia, was the remote occasion of his writing, many years afterwards, his admirable philosophical tale, the principal scene of which is laid in that country. Johnson returned to Lichfield early in 1734, and in August that year he made an attempt to procure some little subsistence by his pen; for he published proposals for printing by subscription the Latin poems of Politian: "Angeli Politiani Poemata Latina, quibus, Notas, cum historiâ Latina poeseos, à Petrarchæ ævo ad Politiani tempora deductâ, et vitâ Politiani fusius quam antihac enarratâ, addidit SAM. JOHNSON." It appears that his brother Nathanael had taken up his father's trade; for it is mentioned, that "subscriptions are taken in by the Editor, or N. Johnson, bookseller, of Lichfield."1 Notwithstanding the merit of Johnson, and the cheap price at which this translation, with its accompanyments, was offered, there were not subscribers enough to insure a sufficient sale; so the work never appeared, and, probably, never was executed. We find him again this year at Birmingham, and there is preserved the following letter from him to Mr. Edward The book was to contain more than thirty sheets, the price to be two shillings and six-pence at the time of subscribing, and two shillings and six-pence at the delivery of a perfect book in quires. 1 The brothers do not appear to have agreed very well. There was some jealousy between them as to their share of their mother's affection.-(Autob.) A letter of Nathaniel's was lately sold at Lichfield, in which he complained to his mother of his brother's treatmenthe had scarcely "used him with common civility. I believe I shall go to Georgia," he adds, "in a fortnight." Johnson paid him an affectionate tribute in the Latin inscription which commemorates the virtues of his family-"vires et animi et corporis multa polli cerentur." Johnson, a short time before his death, wrote to a lady near Frome to know whether anything was remembered of a near relative of his, long since dead; and, from the tender interest he shows, the trade of bookbinder being the same, and his coldness to his other male relatives, I think Nathaniel must have been the per son meant : "It may be, Madam, in your power to gratify my curiosity. Your servants, I suppose, go frequently to Froom, and it will be thought by me a favour, if you will be pleased to bid them collect any little tradition that may yet remain of one Johnson, who, more than forty years ago, was for a short time a bookbinder or stationer in that town. Such intelligence must be gotten by accident, and therefore, cannot be immediately expected; but perhaps in time somebody may be found that knew him. He was not a native of your town or county, but an adventurer, who came from a distant part in quest of a livelihood, and did not stay a year. He came in 36 and went away in 37. He was likely enough to attract notice while he staid, as a lively, noisy man that loved company. memory might, probably, continue for some time in some favourite ale-house. He was my near relation."-Aug. 1780.-Vide Notes and Queries, s. iv. v. 5, p. 441. His Cave, the original compiler and editor of the Gentleman's Magazine: To Mr. CAVE. "Nov. 25, 1734. "SIR,-As you appear no less sensible than your readers of the defects of your poetical article, you will not be displeased, if, in order to the improvement of it, I communicate to you the sentiments of a person, who will undertake, on reasonable terms, sometimes to fill a column. "His opinion is, that the publick would not give you a bad reception, if, beside the current wit of the month, which a critical examination would generally reduce to a narrow compass, you admitted not only poems, inscriptions, &c., never printed before, which he will sometimes supply you with; but likewise short literary dissertations in Latin or English, critical remarks on authours ancient or modern, forgotten poems that deserve revival, or loose pieces, like Floyer's, worth preserving. By this method your literary article, for so it might be called, will, he thinks, be better recommended to the publick, than by low jests, aukward buffoonery, or the dull scurrilities of either party. "If such a correspondence will be agreeable to you, be pleased to inform me in two posts, what the conditions are on which you shall expect it. Your late offer gives me no reason to distrust your generosity. If you engage in any literary projects besides this paper, I have other designs to impart, if I could be secure from having others reap the advantage of what I should hint. "Your letter, by being directed to S. Smith, to be left at the Castle in Birmingham, Warwickshire, will reach "Your humble servant." Mr. Cave has put a note on this letter, "Answered Dec. 2."1 But whether anything was done in consequence of it we are not informed. Miss Cave, the Grand-niece of Mr. Edward Cave, has obligingly shown me the originals of this and the other letters of Dr. Johnson, to him, which were first published in the Gentleman's Magazine, with notes by Mr. John Nichols, the worthy and indefatigable editor of that valuable miscellany, signed N; some of which I shall occasionally transcribe in the course of this work. A prize of fifty pounds for the best poem "on Life, Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell."-See Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. IV. p. 60. N. Cor. et Ad.-Line 17, note: Sir John Floyer's Treatise on "Cold Baths."-Gent. Mag. 1734, p. 147. In this answer, Hawkins says, Cave accepted his services. Johnson had, from his early youth, been sensible to the influence. of female charms. When at Stourbridge school, he was much enamoured of Olivia Lloyd, a young quaker, to whom he wrote a copy of verses, which I have not been able to recover; and I am assured by Miss Seward, that he conceived a tender passion for Miss Lucy Porter, daughter of the lady whom he afterwards. married. Miss Porter was sent very young on a visit to Lichfield, where Johnson had frequent opportunities of seeing and admiring her; and he addressed to her the following verses, on her presenting him with a nosegay of myrtle : "What hopes, what terrors does thy gift create, The myrtle, ensign of supreme command, Soon must this bough, as you shall fix his doom, His juvenile attachments to the fair sex were, however, very transient; and it is certain, that he formed no criminal connection a "Mrs. Piozzi, in her 'Anecdotes,' asserts that Johnson wrote this effusion of elegant tenderness not in his own person, but for a friend who was in love. But that lively lady is as inaccurate in this instance as in many others; for Miss Seward writes to me- I know those verses were addressed to Lucy Porter, when he was enamoured of her in his boyish days, two or three years before he had seen her mother, his future wife. He wrote them at my grandfather's, and gave them to Lucy in the presence of my mother, to whom he shewed them on the instant. She used to repeat them to me, when I asked her for the verses Dr. Johnson gave her on a sprig of myrtle, which he had stolen or begged from her bosom. We all know honest Lucy Porter to have been incapable of the mean vanity of applying to herself a compliment not intended for her.'"' Cor. et Ad.-Line 4. Instead of "and I am assured," &c., to the end of the paragraph, read, "but with what facility and elegance he could warble the amorous lay will appear from the following lines, which he wrote for his friend, Mr. Edmund Hector." Cor. et Ad.-Line 24: On tomb put the following note: "Mrs. Piozzi gives the following account of this little composition from Dr. Johnson's own relation to her, on 1 There are also some verses of his addressed to Miss Hickman. This would seem connected with the allusion in his letter to Mr. Geo. Hickman (Croker, p. 20), in which he writes, "One's own disappointment is no invit. ing subject." whatsoever. Mr. Hector, who lived with him in his younger days in the utmost intimacy and social freedom, has assured me, that even at that ardent season his conduct was strictly virtuous in that respect; and that though he loved to exhilarate himself with wine, he never knew him intoxicated but once. In a man whom religious education has secured from licentious indulgences, the passion of love, when once it has seized him, is exceedingly strong; being unimpaired by dissipation, and totally her inquiring whether it was rightly attributed to him:-'I think it is now just forty years ago, that a young fellow had a sprig of myrtle given him by a girl he courted, and asked me to write him some verses that he might present her in return. I promised, but forgot; and when he called for his lines at the time agreed on-Sit still a moment, (says I) dear Mund, and I'll fetch them thee-So stepped aside for five minutes, and wrote the nonsense you now keep such a stir about.'—Anecdotes, p. 34. "In my first edition I was induced to doubt the authenticity of this account, by the following circumstantial statement in a letter to me from Miss Seward, of Lichfield:'I know those verses were addressed to Lucy Porter, when he was enamoured of her in his boyish days, two or three years before he had seen her mother, his future wife. He wrote them at my grandfather's, and gave them to Lucy in the presence of my mother, to whom he shewed them on the instant. She used to repeat them to me, when I asked her for the Verses Dr. Johnson gave her on a Sprig of Myrtle, which he had stolen or begged from her bosom. We all know honest Lucy Porter to have been incapable of the mean vanity of applying to herself a compliment not intended for her.' Such was this lady's statement, which I make no doubt she supposed to be correct; but it shews how dangerous it is to trust too implicitly to traditional testimony and ingenious inference; for Mr. Hector has lately assured me that Mrs. Piozzi's account is in this instance accurate, and that he was the person for whom Johnson wrote those verses, which have been erroneously ascribed to Mr. Hammond. “I am obliged in so many instances to notice Mrs. Piozzi's incorrectness of relation, that I gladly seize this opportunity of acknowledging, that however often, she is not always inaccurate." "' of 1 Thus characteristically had Boswell embroiled himself with the two literary ladies. He had made an amende to Mrs. Piozzi; but Miss Seward was deeply offended at her name being "very impo litely introduced on the first page what she called Mr. Boswell's "pamphlet," an expression that nettled him. The controversy is highly amusing, and shows the tartness and malice which underlay all the della cruscan sensibilities. Boswell had tried to propitiate her by writing for information, and by a gracious allusion on the subject of the "Verses on the Duck." She, however, began to attack Johnson and his biographer in letters signed "Benvoglio." The authorship was soon discovered, and the first result was Boswell's studiously-offensive note. The dispute was then transferred to the Gentleman's Magazine, where Boswell rallied the lady with great spirit and severity, as a specimen will show :-"Miss Seward may be assured that she is as much mis taken as to me as she certainly is as to Dr. Johnson. I am not her foe, though I committed to the flames those sheets of Johnsonian Narratives' with which I was favoured by her, among the almost innumerable communications which I obtained concerning the illustrious subject of my great biographical work. I, however, first extracted from these sheets all that I could possibly consider to be authentic. Nay, so desirous was I to give Miss Seward every advantage that, after refuting the impossible legend of Johnson's verses on a Duck, when he was but three years old, to which, for a woman's reason, she still pertinaciously adheres, I preserved the ingenious reflections which she, supposing it to be true, had made on that idle tale. And now, to put an end to all future disputation on the mighty points of the Duck and the Myrtle, which have been the cause of this war 66 This tumult in a vestal's veins."— concentrated in one object. This was experienced by Johnson, when he became the fervent admirer of Mrs. Porter, after her first husband's death. Miss Porter told me, that when he was first introduced to her mother, his appearance was very forbidding: He was then lean and lank, so that his immense structure of bones was hideously striking to the eye, and the scars of the scrophula. were deeply visible. He also wore his hair, which was straight and stiff, and separated behind; and he often had, seemingly, convulsive starts and odd gesticulations, which tended to excite at once surprise and ridicule. Mrs. Porter was so much engaged by his conversation that she overlooked all these external disadvantages, and said to her daughter, "this is the most sensible man that I ever saw in my life." [1735.] Though Mrs. Porter was double the age of Johnson,1 and her person and manners, as described to me by the late Mr. Garrick, were by no means pleasing to others, she must have had a supe May I not now flatter myself, Mr. Urban, that I shall not have the trouble of any further altercation with Miss Seward? Let the Duck be changed into a Swan, and the Myrtle into an Olive." Rather maliciously, but not without some speciousness, the lady urged that Johnson might have a motive for denying that he had written verses to a young lady whose mother he had married. But a letter of Mr. Hector's settled the question: "Lately, in looking over some papers I meant to burn, I found the original manuscript of the myrtle, with the date on it, 1731, which I have inclosed. "The true history (which I could swear to) is as follows: Mr. Morgan Graves, the elder brother of a worthy clergyman near Bath, with whom I was acquainted, waited upon a lady in this neighbourhood, who at parting presented him the branch. He shewed it me, and wished much to return the compliment in verse. I applied to Johnson, who was with me, and in about half an hour dictated the verses which I sent to my friend. "I most solemnly declare, at that time, Johnson was an entire stranger to the l'orter family; and it was almost two years after that I introduced him to the acquaintance of Porter, whom I bought my cloaths of. "If you intend to convince this obstinate woman, and to exhibit to the publick the truth of your narrative, you are at liberty to make what use you please of this statement. "I hope you will pardon me for taking up so much of your time. Wishing you multos et felices annos, I shall subscribe myself "Your obliged humble servant, "E. HECTOR. "Birmingham, Jan. 9th, 1794." She was forty-eight at the time. Malone quotes her baptismal certificate. Her hair, Johnson told Mrs. Piozzi, was blonde, which she always was wanting to dye black. Mrs. Piozzi had seen a picture of her, which she said was pretty. Garrick described their bearing to each other as "somewhat crazy." She had two grown-up children. Sir J. Hawkins says she had a fortune of 800l., and yet, at the same time, adds that her husband died a bankrupt. On the other hand, this sum may have been used for the Edial scheme. Miss Seward sent Boswell a report of a strange conversation between Johnson on the subject of his proposed marriage, which he puts aside as apocryphal, on the following grounds : "Since she has mentioned the late Mrs. Cobb as the person from whom, 'to the best of her remembrance,' she heard the strange conversation between Johnson and his mother concerning his marriage with Mrs. Porter, which she communicated to me, and I suppressed, I will tell her that Mrs. Cobb |