tion of his mind. His belief of revelation was unshaken; his learning preserved his principles; he grew first regular, and then pious. posui, quo die quicquid ante matris funus | lies; but had never neglected the cultiva(quod serum sit precor) de paternis bonis sperari licet, viginti scilicet libras accepi. Usque adeo mihi fortuna fingenda est. Interea, ne paupertate vires animi languescant, nec in flagitia egestas abigat, cavendum. I layed by eleven guineas on this day, when I received twenty pounds, being all that I have reason to hope for out of my father's effects, previous to the death of my mother; an event which, I pray GoD, may be very remote. I now, therefore, see that I must make my own fortune. Meanwhile, let me take care that the powers of my mind be not debilitated by poverty, and that indigence do not force me into any criminal act." Johnson was so far fortunate, that the respectable character of his parents, and his own merit, had, from his earliest years, secured him a kind reception in the best families in Lichfield. Among these I can mention Mr. Howard, Dr. Swinfen, Mr. Simpson, Mr. Levett, Captain Garrick, father of the great ornament of the British stage; but above all, Mr. Gilbert Walmsley, Registrar of the Ecclesiastical Court of Lichfield, whose character, long after his decease, Dr. Johnson has, in his life of Edmund Smith, thus drawn in the glowing colours of gratitude: "Of Gilbert Walmsley, thus presented to my mind, let me indulge myself in the remembrance. I knew him very early; he was one of the first friends that literature procured me, and I hope that, at least, my gratitude made me worthy of his notice. "He was of an advanced age, and I was only not a boy, yet he never received my notions with contempt. He was a whig, with all the virulence and malevolence of his party; yet difference of opinion did not keep us apart. I honoured him, and he endured me. "He had mingled with the gay world without exemption from its vices or its fol 1 Mr. Warton informs me, "that this early friend of Johnson was entered a commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, aged 17, in 1698; and is the author of many Latin verse translations in the Gentleman's Magazine. One of them is a translation (Gent. Mag. vol. 15, p. 102) of "My time, O ye Muses, was happily spent," &c. He [was born in 1680, and] died August 3, 1751. A monument to his memory has been erected in the cathedral of Lichfield, with an inscription written by Mr. Seward, one of the prebendaries.-BoswELL. [He was the son of W. Walmesley, LL. D. chancellor of the diocese of Lichfield from 1698 to 1713, who was elected M. P: for that city in 1701, and brother of Dr. Walmesley, Dean of Lichfield, who died in Sept. 1730. Johnson, and Boswell after him, spell this name Walmsley, but the true spelling is that which has been adopted in this note.-ED.] "His studies had been so various, that I am not able to name a man of equal knowledge. His acquaintance with books was great, and what he did not immediately know, he could, at least, tell where to find. Such was his amplitude of learning, and such his copiousness of communication, that it may be doubted whether a day now passes, in which I have not some advantage from his friendship. "At this man's table? I enjoyed many cheerful and instructive hours, with companions, such as are not often found-with one who has lengthened, and one who has gladdened life-with Dr. James, whose skill in physick will be long remembered; and with David Garrick, whom I hoped to have gratified with this character of our common friend. But what are the hopes of man! I am disappointed by that stroke of death, which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and impoverished the publick stock of harmless pleasure." In these families he passed much time in his early years. In most of them he was in the company of ladies, particularly at Mr. Walmsley's, whose wife and sisters-inlaw, of the name of Aston, and daughters of a baronet, were remarkable for good breeding; so that the notion which has been industriously circulated and believed, that he never was in good company till late in life, and, consequently, had been confirmed in coarse and ferocious manners by long habits, is wholly without foundation. Some of the ladies have assured me, they recollected him well when a young man, as distinguished for his complaisance. And that his politeness 3 was not merely occasional and temporary, or confined to the circles of Lichfield, is ascertained by the testimony of a lady 4, who, in a paper with which I have been favoured by a daughter of his intimate friend and physician, Dr. Lawrence, thus describes Dr. Johnson some years afterwards: "As the particulars of the former part of 2 [This acknowledgement does not seem quite adequate to Johnson's obligations to Mr. Walmesley, who certainly gave him more active proofs of his benevolence than the mere admission to his table and society.-ED.] 3 [There is, it will be observed, in all this, no testimony to Johnson's personal politeness, but only to his having been admitted to polite company.-ED.] 4 [It were to be wished that Boswell had stated the name of this lady, as he has given us so much reason to distrust the information derived from "the circles of Lichfield."-ED.] Dr. Johnson's life do not seem to be very | sides his intimacy with the above-mentionaccurately known, a lady hopes that the following information may not be unacceptable. ed persons, who were surely people of rank and education, while he was yet at Lichfield he used to be frequently at the house of Dr. Swinfen, a gentleman of very ancient family in Staffordshire, from which, after the death of his elder brother, he inherited a good estate. He was, beside, a physician of very extensive practice; but for want of due attention to the management of his domestic concerns, left a very large family in indigence. One of his daughters, Mrs. Desmoulins, afterwards found an asylum in the house of her old friend, whose doors were always open to the unfortunate, and who well observed the precept of the Gospel, for he was kind to the unthankful and to the evil 4.” ” She remembers Dr. Johnson on a visit to Dr. Taylor, at Ashbourn, some time between the end of the year 37, and the middle of the year 40; she rather thinks it to have been after he and his wife were removed to London. During his stay at Ashbourn, he made frequent visits to Mr. Meynell, at Bradley, where his company was much desired by the ladies of the family, who were, perhaps, in point of elegance and accomplishments, inferiour to few of those with whom he was afterwards acquainted. Mr. Meynell's eldest daughter was afterwards married to Mr. Fitzherbert, father to Mr. Alleyne Fitzherbert, lately In the forlorn state of his circumstances, minister to the court of Russia [and since he accepted of an offer to be employed as Lord St. Helens.] Of her, Dr. Johnson usher in the school of Market-Bosworth, in said, in Dr. Lawrence's study, that she had Leicestershire, to which it appears, from the best understanding he ever met with in one of his little fragments of a diary, that any human being. At Mr. Meynell's he also he went on foot, on the 16th of July.commenced that friendship with Mrs. Hill"Julii 16. Bosvortiam pedes Boothby, sister to the present Sir Brook petii." But it is not true, as Gent. Mag. Boothby, which continued till her death 2. has been erroneously related, that The young woman whom he used to he was assistant to the famous Anthony Hawk. call Molly Aston, was sister to Sir Blackwall, whose merit has been honourThomas Aston, and daughter to a ed by the testimony of Bishop Hurd 5, baronet; she was also sister to the wife of who was his scholar; for Mr. Blackwall his friend, Mr. Gilbert Walmsley 3. Be- died on the 8th of April, 17306, more than a year before Johnson left the University, p. $16. 1 [Dr. Taylor must have been at this time a very young man. His residence at Ashbourn was patrimonial, and not ecclesiastical, as has been supposed. The house and grounds which Dr. Johnson's visits have rendered remarkable are now the property of Mr. Webster, Dr. Taylor's legatee.-ED.] liv. 957. him in every respect, and he complained This employment was very irksome to of the Navy. Another sister, who was unmarried, was living at Lichfield in 1776.-MALONE. [Of the latter, whose name was Elizabeth, Miss Seward has put an injurious character into the mouth of Dr. Johnson (in a dialogue which she reports herself to have had with him). She died in 1785, in the 78th year of her age.-ED.] 4 [Here Mr. Boswell has admitted the insinuation of an anonymous informant against poor Mrs. Desmoulins, as bitter, surely, as any thing which can be charged against any of his rival bi 2 [For the last few years of her life this lady corresponded with Dr. Johnson, and some of her letters are appended to the Account of his early Life, so often quoted. Indeed, they occupy 126 pages of the 144 of which that little publication consists. Miss Seward hints that there was an early attachment between Johnson and Miss Boothby. Miss Seward's anecdotes are so justly dis-ographers; and, strange to say, this scandal is credited, that it is hardly worth observing, that there appears no ground whatsoever for this story; and the published letters, which are of a very serious and pious cast, not only negative Miss Seward's gossiping fancies, but throw some doubt on the accuracy of Mr. Boswell's informant, for they seem to prove that there had not been any-ED.] intimate or even early acquaintance between the parties. Miss Boothby was born in 1708, and died in 1756.--ED.] conveyed in a quotation from the book of Charity. Mrs. Desmoulins was probably not popular with "the ladies of Lichfield." She is supposed to have forfeited the protection of her own family by, what they thought, a derogatory marriage. Her husband, it is said, was a writing-master. 5 There is here (as Mr. James Boswell observes to me) a slight inaccuracy. Bishop Hurd, in the Epistle Dedicatory prefixed to his Commentary 3 Sir Thomas Aston, Bart., who died in Jan- on Horace's Art of Poetry, &c., does not praise uary, 1724-5, left one son, named Thomas also, Blackwall, but the Rev. Mr. Budworth, headand eight daughters. Of the daughters, Catherine master of the grammar-school at Brewood, in married Johnson's friend, the Hon. Henry Her-Staffordshire, who had himself been bred under vey; Margaret, Gilbert Walmsley. Another of these ladies [Jane] married the Rev. Mr. Gastrell [the clergyman who cut down Shakspeare's mulberry-tree]. Mary, or Molly Aston, as she was usually called, became the wife of Captain Brodie Blackwall.-MALONE. [We shall see presently, on the authority of Mr. Nichols, that Johnson proposed himself to Mr. Budworth as an assistant.ED.] 6 [See ante, p. 27.-ED.] grievously of it in his letters to his friend, Mr. Hector, who was now settled as a surgeon at Birmingham. The letters are lost; but Mr. Hector recollects his writing "that the poet had described the dull sameness of his existence in these words, 'Vitam continet una dies' (one day contains the whole of my life); that it was unvaried as the note of the cuckow; and that he did not know whether it was more disagreeable for him to teach, or the boys to learn, the grammar rules." His general aversion to this painful drudgery was greatly enhanced by a disagreement between him and Sir Wolstan Dixie, the patron of the school, in whose house, I have been told, he officiated as a kind of domestic chaplain, so far, at least, as to say grace at table, but was treated with what he represented as intolerable harshness; and, after suffering for a few months such complicated misery, he relinquished a situation which all his life afterwards he recollected with the strongest aversion, and even a degree of horrour.2 [Mr. Malone, in a note on this passage, states that he had read a letter of Johnson's to a friend, dated 27th July, 1732, saying that he had then recently left Sir Wolstan Dixie's house, and that he had some hopes of succeeding, either as master or usher, in the school of Ashbourn. But it is probable that at this period, whatever uneasiness he may have endured, he laid the foundation of much future eminence by application to his studies. Being now again totally unoccupied, he was invited by Mr. Hector to pass some time with him at Birmingham, as his guest, at the house of Mr. Warren, with whom Mr. Hector lodged and boarded. Mr. Warren was the first established bookseller in Birmingham, and was very attentive to Johnson, who he soon found could be of much service to him in his trade, by his knowledge of literature; and he even obtained the assistance of his pen in furnishing some numbers of a periodical Essay, printed in the newspaper of which Warren was proprietor. After very diligent inquiry, I have not been able to recover those early specimens of that particular mode of writing by which Johnson afterwards so greatly distinguished himself. He continued to live as Mr. Hector's guest for about six months, and then hired lodgings in another part of the town 3, finding himself as well situated at Birmingham as he supposed he could be any where, while he had no settled plan of life, and He very scanty means of subsistence. made some valuable acquaintances there, amongst whom were Mr. Porter, a mercer, whose widow he afterwards married, andMr. Taylor, who, by his ingenuity in mechanical inventions and his success in trade If Mr. Malone be correct in the date of this letter, and Mr. Boswell be also right in placing the extract from the diary under the year 1732, Johnson's sojourn at Bosworth could have been not more than ten days, a time too short to be charac-acquired an immense fortune. But the comterized as "a period of complicated misery," and to be remembered during a long life with the strongest aversion and horror." It must also be observed, that according to the statement of Messrs. Boswell and Malone compared with the College books, Johnson's life, from December, 1729, to the beginning of 1733, is wholly unaccounted for, except the ten days supposed to have been so lamentably spent at Bosworth. The only probable solution of these difficulties is, that the walk to Bosworth on the 16th July, 1732, was not his first appearance there; but that having been called to Lichfield, to receive his share of his father's property, which, we have seen, p. 27, that he did on the 15th July, he returned to Bosworth on the 16th, perhaps for the purpose of making arrangements for finally leaving it, which he did within ten days. It seems very extraordinary, that the laborious diligence, and the lively curiosity of Hawkins, Boswell, Murphy, and Malone, were able to discover so little of the history of Johnson's life from December, 1729, to his marriage in July, 1736, and that what they have told should be liable to so much doubt. It may be inferred, that it was a period to which Johnson looked back with little satisfaction, and of which he did not love to talk; though it cannot be doubted that, during these five or six important years, he must have collected a large portion of that vast stock of information, with which he afterwards surprised and delighted the world.-ED.] 2 fort of being near Mr. Hector, his old schoolfellow and intimate friend, was Johnson's chief inducement to continue here. In what manner he employed his pen at this period, or whether he derived from it able to ascertain. He probably got a little any pecuniary advantage, I have not been money from Mr. Warren; and we are certain, that he executed here one piece of literary labour, of which Mr. Hector has favoured me with a minute account. Having mentioned that he had read at Pembroke College a Voyage to Abyssinia, by Lobo (a Portuguese Jesuit), and that he thought an Abridgement and translation of it from the French into English might be an useful and profitable publication, Mr. Warren and Mr. Hector joined in urging him to undertake it. He accordingly agreed; and the book not being to be found in Birming stan Dixie's temper was, to say the least of it irregular and violent; but it must also be recollected, that Johnson's own mind had recently been in a state of morbid disturbance.—ED.] 3 Sir John Hawkins states, from one of Johnson's diaries, that he lodged, in June, 1733, in Birmingham, at the house of a person named Jervis, probably a relation of Mrs. Porter, whom he afterwards married, and whose maiden name was [There seems reason to suspect that Sir Wol- | Jervis.-MALONE, lives." But, in the Preface, the Johnsonian style begins to appear; and though use had not yet taught his wing a permanent and equable flight, there are parts of it which ex once the pleasure of examining it with Mr. Edmund Burke, who confirmed me in this opinion by his superiour critical sagacity, and was, I remember, much delighted with the following specimen: ham, he borrowed it of Pembroke College. | cala, which cost two of our fathers their A part of the work being very soon done, one Osborn, who was Mr. Warren's print- Every one acquainted with Johnson's er, was set to work with what was ready, manner will be sensible that there is nothand Johnson engaged to supply the pressing of it here; but that this sentence might with copy as it should be wanted; but his have been composed by any other man. constitutional indolence soon prevailed, and the work was at a stand. Mr. Hector, who knew that a motive of humanity would be the most prevailing argument with his friend, went to Johnson, and represent-hibit his best manner in full vigour. I had ed to him that the printer could have no other employment till this undertaking was finished, and that the poor man and his family were suffering. Johnson, upon this, exerted the powers of his mind, though his body was relaxed. He lay in bed with the book, which was a quarto, before him, and dictated while Hector wrote. Mr. Hector carried the sheets to the press, and corrected almost all the proof sheets, very few of which were even seen by Johnson. In this manner, with the aid of Mr. Hector's active friendship, the book was completed, and was published in 1735, with London upon the title-page, though it was in reality printed at Birmingham, a device too common with provincial publishers. For this work he had from Mr. Warren only the sum of five guineas. This being the first prose work of Johnson, it is a curious object of inquiry how much may be traced in it of that style which marks his subsequent writings with such peculiar excellence-with so happy an union of force, vivacity, and perspicuity. I have perused the book with this view, and have found that here, as I believe in every other translation, there is in the work itself no vestige of the translator's own style; for the language of translation being adapted to the thoughts of another person, insensibly follows their cast, and, as it were, runs into a mould that is ready prepared. Thus, for instance, taking the first sentence that occurs at the opening of the book, p. 4: "I lived here above a year, and completed my studies in divinity; in which time some letters were received from the fathers of Ethiopia, with an account that Sultan Segned, Emperour of Abyssinia, was converted to the church of Rome; that many of his subjects had followed his example, and that there was a great want of missionaries to improve these prosperous beginnings. Every body was very desirous of seconding the zeal of our fathers, and of sending them the assistance they requested; to which we were the more encouraged, because the emperour's letter informed our provincial that we might easily enter his dominions by the way of Dancala; but, unhappily, the secretary wrote Geila for Dan "The Portuguese traveller, contrary to the general vein of his countrymen, has amused his reader with no romantick absurdity, or incredible fictions; whatever he relates, whether true or not, is at least probable; and he who tells nothing exceeding the bounds of probability, has a right to demand that they should believe him who cannot contradict him. "He appears, by his modest and unaffected narration, to have described things as he saw them, to have copied nature from the life, and to have consulted his senses, not his imagination. He meets with no basilisks that destroy with their eyes, his crocodiles devour their prey without tears, and his cataracts fall from the rocks without deafening the neighbouring inhabitants. "The reader will here find no regions cursed with irremediable barrenness, or blest with spontaneous fecundity; no perpetual gloom, or unceasing sunshine; nor are the nations here described, either devoid of all sense of humanity, or consummate in all private or social virtues. Here are no Hottentots without religious policy or articulate language; no Chinese perfectly polite and completely skilled in all sciences; he will discover, what will always be discovered by a diligent and impartial inquirer, that wherever human nature is to be found, there is a mixture of vice and virtue, a contest of passion and reason; and that the Creator doth not appear partial in his distributions, but has balanced, in most countries, their particular inconveniences by particular favours." Here we have an early example of that brilliant and energetick expression, which, upon innumerable occasions in his subsequent life, justly impressed the world with the highest admiration. Nor can any one, conversant with the writings of Johnson, fail to discern his hand in this passage of the Dedication to John Warren, Esq. of Pembrokeshire, though it is ascribed to Warren the bookseller. "A generous and elevated mind is listin guished by nothing more certainly than an | mentioned that "subscriptions are taken in eminent degree of curiosity1; nor is that curiosity ever more agreeably or usefully employed, than in examining the laws and customs of foreign nations. I hope, therefore, the present I now presume to make, will not be thought improper; which, however, it is not my business as a dedicator to commend, nor as a bookseller to depreciate." 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 2: Angeli Politiani Poemata Latina, quibus, Notas cum historia Latina poeseos à Petrarcha avo ad Politiani tempora deducta, et vità Politiani fusius quam antehac enarrata, addidit SAM. JOHNSON 3." It appears that his brother Nathanael had taken up his father's trade 4; for it is 1 See Rambler, No. 103. [Curiosity is the thirst of the soul, &c.-ED.] by the Editor, or N. Johnson, bookseller, of Lichfield." Notwithstanding the merit of Johnson, and the cheap price at which this book was offered, there were not sub. scribers enough to ensure a sufficient sale so the work never appeared, and, probably, never was executed. We find him again this year at Birming ham, and there is preserved the following letter from him to Mr. Edward Cave, the original compiler and editor of the Gentle man'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 2 May we not trace a fanciful similarity be- on authours ancient or modern, forgotten tween Politian and Johnson? Huetius, speaking poems that deserve revival, or loose pieces, of Paulus Pelissonius Fontanerius, says "in quo like Floyer's 6, worth preserving. By this Natura, ut olim in Angelo Politiano, deformitatem method, your literary article, for so it might oris excellentis ingenii præstantia compensavit.' be called, will, he thinks, be better recom-Comment. de reb. ad eum pertin. Edit. Amstel.mended to the publick than by low jests, 1718. p. 200.-BOSWELL. [In this learned inasawkward buffoonery, or the dull scurrilities querade of Paulus Pelissonius Fontanerius, of either party. we have some difficulty in detecting Madame de Sevigne's friend, M. Pelisson, of whom another of that lady's friends, M. de Guilleragues, used the phrase, which has since grown into a proverb, "qu'il abusait de la permission qu'ont les hommes d'etre laids."-See Madame de Sevigne's letter, 5th Jan. 1674.-Huet, Bishop of Avranche, wrote Memoirs of his own time, in Latin, from which Boswell has extracted this scrap of pedantry.-ED.] 3 The book was to contain more than thirty sheets; the price to be two shillings and sixpence at the time of subscribing, and two shillings and sixpence at the delivery of a perfect book in quires.-BoswELL. + [Nathanael kept the shop as long as he lived, as did his mother, after him, till her death, though on somewhat, it is to be presumed, of a lowered scale. Miss Seward, who, in such a matter as this, may perhaps be trusted, tells us that Miss Lucy Porter, from the age of twenty to her fortieth year (when she was raised to a state of competency by the death of her eldest brother), boarded in Lichfield with Dr Johnson's mother, who still kept that little bookseller's shop by which her husband had supplied the scanty means of subsistence; meantime Lucy Porter kept the best com had "If such a correspondence will be agree pany in our little city, but would make no engagement on market-days, lest Granny, as she called Mrs. Johnson, should catch cold by serving in the shop. There Lucy Porter took her place, standing behind the counter, nor thought it a disgrace to thank a poor person who purchased from her a penny battledoor."-Lett. 1. 117.—ED.] 5 Miss Cave, the grand-niece of Mr. Edw. 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.-Boswell. [The present editor has felt justified by this and many other testimonies to the accuracy of Mr. Nichols, to admit into his notes and even into the text the information supplied by him.-En.] 6 Sir John Floyer's Treatise on Cold Baths. Gent. Mag. 1734, p. 197. 7 [Is the use of will and shall in this sentence quite grammatical? Dr. Johnson seems sometimes to have used the word shall where it is now |