1762. light and shade that might seem of any choosing but his, he exhibits the moral qualities of Nash, as of one whose Æt. 34. virtues, in almost every instance, received some tincture from the follies most nearly neighbouring them; who, though very poor, was very fine, and spread out the little gold he had as thinly and far as it would go,* but whose poverty was the more to be regretted, that it denied him the indulgence not only of his favourite follies, but of his favourite virtues; who had pity for every creature's distress, but wanted prudence in the application of his benefits, and in whom this ill-controlled sensibility was so strong, that, unable to witness the misfortunes of the miserable, he was always borrowing money to relieve them; who had notwithstanding done a thousand good things, and whose greatest vice was vanity. The self-painted picture will appear more striking as this narrative proceeds; and it would seem to have the same sort of unconscious relation to the future, that one of Nash's friends is mentioned in the book to have gone by the name of The Good-natured Man. Nor should I omit the casual evidence of acquaintanceship between its hero and his biographer that occurs in a lively notice of the three periods of amatory usage which the beau's long life had witnessed, and in which not only had flaxen bobs been succeeded by majors, and negligents been routed by bags and ramilies, but the modes of making love had varied as much as the periwigs. "The only way to make "love now, I have heard Mr. Nash say, was to take no manner of notice of the lady." 66 * Life, 9, 14. The passage suggests the original of Beau Tibbs. Life, 75. "I have known him," he remarks in another passage, "on a ball-night strip even the dutchess of Q-- and throw her apron at one of the hinder "benches among the ladies' women; observing that none but Abigails appeared in 1762. Johnson's purchase of this book, which is charged to him Et. 34. in one of Newbery's accounts, shows his interest in whatever affected Goldsmith at this opening of their friendship. His book-purchases were never abundant; though better able to afford them now than at any previous time, for the May of this year had seen a change in his fortunes. Bute's pensions to his Scottish crew showing meaner than ever in Churchill's daring verse, it occurred to the shrewd and wary Wedderburne (whose sister had married the favourite's most intimate friend) to advise, for a set-off, that Samuel Johnson should be pensioned. Of all the wits at the Grecian or the Bedford, Arthur Murphy, who had been some months fighting the North Briton with the Auditor, and was now watching the Courts at Westminster preparatory to his first circuit in the following year, was best known to Bute's rising lawyer; and Arthur was sent to Johnson. It was an "abode of "wretchedness," said this messenger of glad tidings, describing on his return those rooms of Inner Temple Lane where a visitor of some months before had found the author of the Rambler and Rasselas, now fifty-three years old, without pen, ink, or paper, "in poverty, total idleness, and the pride "of literature." Yet great as was the poverty, and glad the tidings, a shade passed over Johnson's face. After a long pause," he asked if it was seriously intended." Undoubtedly. His majesty, to reward literary merit, and with no desire ... "white aprons . 1762. that the author of the English Dictionary should “dip his "pen in faction" (these were Bute's own words), had signified At. 34. through the premier his pleasure to grant to Samuel Johnson three hundred pounds a year. "He fell into a profound meditation, and his own definition of a pensioner "occurred to him." He was told that "he, at least, did not 66 come within the definition;" but it was not till after dinner with Murphy at the Mitre on the following day, that he consented to wait on Bute and accept the proffered bounty.* To be pensioned with the fraudulent and contemptible Shebbeare, so lately pilloried for a Jacobite libel on the Revolution of '88; to find himself in the same Bute-list with a Scotch court-architect, with a Scotch court-painter, with the infamous David Mallet, and with Johnny Home, must have chafed Sam Johnson's pride a little; and when, in a few more months, as author of another English Dictionary, old Sheridan the actor received two hundred a year (because his theatre had suffered in the Dublin riots, pleaded Wedderburne; because he had gone to Edinburgh to teach Bute's friend to talk English, said Wilkes), it had become very plain to him that Lord Bute knew nothing of literature. But he had compromised no independence in the course he took, and might afford to laugh at the outcry which followed. "I wish my pension were twice as large, sir," he said afterwards at Davies's, "that they might make twice as much "noise."t But Davies was now grown into so much importance, and his shop was a place so often memorable for the persons who met there, that more must be said of both in a new chapter. * See Murphy's account in his Essay prefixed to Johnson's works, 51. Ed. 1825. † Boswell, ii. 234 note. CHAPTER VI. 1762. INTRODUCTIONS AT TOM DAVIES'S. 1762. THOMAS DAVIES, ex-performer of Drury Lane, and now pubEt. 34. lisher and bookseller of Russell-street, Covent Garden, had now (with his "very pretty wife ") left the stage and taken wholly to bookselling, which he had recently, and for the second time, attempted to combine with acting. The Rosciad put a final extinguisher on his theatrical existence.* He never afterwards mouthed a sentence in one of the kingly and heavy parts he was in the habit of playing, that Churchill's image of cur and bone did not confuse the sentence which followed; his eye never fell upon any prominent figure in the front row of the pit, that he did not tremble to fancy it the brawny person of Churchill. What he thus lost in self-possession, Garrick meanwhile lost in temper; and matters came to a breach, in which Johnson, being appealed to, took part against Garrick, as he was seldom disinclined to do. Pretty Mrs. Davies may have helped his inclination here; for when seized with his old moody abstraction, as was "In 1736, *The rev. Mr. Granger mentions the most interesting fact in it. "he acted at the theatre in the Haymarket, where he was the first person who "performed Young Wilmot in Lillo's tragedy of the Fatal Curiosity, under the management of the celebrated Henry Fielding." Letters, 69. 1762. not unusual, in the bookseller's parlour, and he began to blow, and too-too, and mutter prayers to be delivered from tempta- Et. 34. tion, Davies would whisper his wife with waggish humour, You, my dear, are the cause of this." But be the cause what it might, the pompous little bibliopole never afterwards lost favour; and it became as natural for men interested in Johnson, or those who clustered round him, to repair to Davies's the bookseller in Russell-street, as for those who wanted to hear of George Selwyn, Lord March, or Lord Carlisle, to call at Betty's the fruiterer in St. James's-street. A frequent visitor was Goldsmith; his thick, short, clumsy figure, and his awkward though genial manners, oddly contrasting with Mr. Percy's, precise, reserved, and stately. The high-bred and courtly Beauclerc might deign to saunter in. Often would be seen there, the broad fat face of Foote, with wicked humour flashing from the eye; and sometimes the mild long face of Bennet Langton, filled with humanity and gentleness. There had Goldsmith met a rarer visitor, the bland and gracious Reynolds, soon after his first introduction to him, a few months back, in Johnson's chambers; and there would even Warburton drive on some proud business of his own, in his equipage "besprinkled with mitres," after calling on Garrick in Southampton-street. For Garrick himself, it was perhaps the only place of meeting he cared to avoid, in that neighbourhood which had so profited and been gladdened by his genius; in which his name was oftener resounded than that of any other human being; and throughout which, we are told, there was a fondness for him, that, as his sprightly figure passed along, " darted electrically from shop to shop." What the great actor said some years later, indeed, he already seems to have fancied: that " he believed 66 |