Account of Books for 1791. The Life of Samuel Johnson, L L. D. comprehending an account of his studies and numerous works, in chronological order; a series of his epistolary correspondence and conversation with many eminent persons; and various original pieces of his composition, never before published. The whole exhibiting a view of literature and literary men in Great Britain, for near half a century, during which he flourished; by James Boswell, esq. 4to. 2 vols. 1791. OTHING can afford a stronger proof of the high estimation in which the character and writings of Dr. Johnson are held by the public, than the great attention that has been paid to the various, we might say numerous, accounts of his life, of his opinions, of his writings, and of his social connexions, which have appeared, since the presence of this distinguished luminary of literature was withdrawn from us by the common destiny of mankind:-but the hand of death could only reach his mortal part, which alone was vulnerable: his fame will survive; and his works will continue to be regarded as his most splendid monument, when stone and brass, when temples and cathedrals, are mouldered away, and are returned, like their builders, to the earth, from which they sprang. Among the numerous friends, the admirers, we are tempted to add, the idolizers, of Johnson (for the admiration of some, however justly founded, has been carried to lengths little short of idolatry), Mr. Boswell is well known, as not the least considerable, in the esteem and confidence of that great and singular character,-the memorials of which he has, at length, presented to us: we say at length, because the promised work has been long expected. With regard to the form in which Mr. Boswell's work is given to the public, if not altogether new, is somewhat extraordinary as to the manner in which the author has written it: but to us the novelty is not unpleasant. Xenophon's Memorabilia of Socrates may, possibly, have first suggested to Mr. Boswell the idea of preserving and giving to us the Memorabilia of Johnson: but he professes to have followed a model of later times: that of Mason, in his Memoirs of Gray. He has, however, by much, the advantage of Mr. Mason, in the quantity, variety, and richness of his materials. "Indeed," says the biographer, "I cannot conceive a more perfect mode mode of writing any man's life, than not only relating all the most important events of it in their order, but interweaving what he privately wrote, and said, and thought; by which mankind are enabled, as it were, to see him live, and to live o'er each scene' with him, as he actually advanced through the several stages of his life. Had his other friends been as diligent and ardent as I was, he might have been almost entirely preserved. As it is, I will venture to say, that he will be seen, in this work, more completely than any man who has ever yet lived. And he will be seen as he really was; for I profess to write, not his panegyric, which must be all praise, but his life; which, great and good as he was, must not be supposed to be entirely perfect." It is but justice to declare, that although Mr. Boswell fondly indulges the feelings of friendship for the memory of his friend whenever the occasion will permit, he does not appear in any instance to have been seduced from the strict impartiality, and love of truth, which the duty of the historian requires. To follow the author in all the domestic privacies and minute details of the daily life and conversation of Johnson, which he has here exhibited in such abundant variety, might gratify our own inclinations, but would greatly exceed the limits we prescribe to ourselves in this department of our volume. We shall therefore endeavour to extract from these volumes the outline of Johnson's life, preserving, as far as it is possible, in a connected series, those peculiarities of thought and action by which this extraordinary character is distinguished. Before we proceed to our selections, let us attend to Mr. Boswell's general introductory paragraph, relative to his opportunities of becoming acquainted with the more remarkable incidents of Johnson's early years, as well as with those of the subsequent part of his life: "As I had the honour and happiness of enjoying his friendship for upwards of twenty years; as I had the scheme of writing his life constantly in view; as he was well apprized of this circumstance, and from time to time obligingly satisfied my inquiries, by communicating to me the incidents of his early years; as I acquired a facility in recollecting, and was very assiduous in recording his conversation, of which the extraordinary vigour and vivacity constituted one of the first features of his character; and as I have spared no pains in obtaining materials concerning him, from every quarter where I could discover that they were to be found, and have been favoured with the most liberal communications by his friends; I flatter myself that few biographers have entered upon such a work as this, with more advantages, independent of literary abilities, in which I am not vain enough to compare myself with some great names who have gone before me in this kind of writing.' Such opportunities for obtaining biographical materials, relative to an individual, perhaps never before fell to the lot of any writer; and greater and more unremitted application in the use of them cannot, we believe, easily be conceived. We have, indeed, been astonished at Mr.Boswell's industry and perseverance! to say nothing of the mu tiplicity tiplicity and variety of his own occasional and pertinent observations, which are properly interspersed with the anecdotes, letters, and details. Samuel Johnson was born at Litchfield, in Staffordshire, on the 18th of September, N. S. 1709; and baptized the same day, as appears by the register of St. Mary's parish, in that city. His father, Michael Johnson, was a native of Derbyshire, of obscure extraction, who settled in Litchfield, as a bookseller and stationer. His mother, Sarah Ford, was descended of an ancient race of substantial yeomanry, in Warwickshire. They were well advanced in years when they married; and never had more than two children, both sons; Samuel, "who lived to be," says Mr. Boswell," the illustrious character whose various excellence I am to endeavour to record," their first-born; and Nathaniel, who died in his twenty-fifth year. Mr. Michael Johnson, although endowed with a strong and active mind, was afflicted with a mixture of that disease the nature of which eludes the most minute inquiry, though the effects are well known to be a weariness of life, an unconcern about those things which agitate the greater part of mankind, and a general sensation of gloomy wretchedness; and from him his son Samuel inherited "a vile melancholy," which, to use his own expression, "made him mad all his life, or at least not sober." The father of Johnson was a pretty good Latin scholar, and his mother a woman of distinguished understanding and great piety; but the early in stances he exhibited of the strength of his memory and extraordinary parts soon rendered a more extensive VOL. XXXIII. source of information necessary; and after being taught to read English by Dame Oliver, a widow, who kept a school for young children at Litchfield, and by a master whom he familiarly called Tom Brown, and who had published a spelling-book, and dedicated it To the Universe, he began to learn Latin with Mr. Hawkins, usher or under master of Litchfield school; and rose in the course of two years to be under the care of Mr. Hunter, the head master. Of this master Johnson used to say, "He beat us unmercifully, and did not distinguish between ignorance and negligence; for he would beat a boy equally for not knowing a thing and for neglecting to know it. He would ask a boy a question; and if he did not answer it he would beat him, without considering whether he had an opportunity of knowing how to answer it. For instance, he would call up a boy and ask him Latin for a candlestick, which the boy could not expect to be asked. Now, sir, if a boy could answer every question, there would be no need of a master to teach him." Mr. Boswell, however, thinks it necessary, in justice to the memory of Mr. Hunter, to mention, that though he might err in being too severe, the school of Litchfield was very respectable in his time; and Johnson himself afterwards attributed his accurate knowledge of Latin to his thus enforcing instruction by means of the rod; a mode of chastisement of which he, upon all occasions, expressed his approbation. "I would rather," said he, " have the rod to be the general terror of all, to make them learn, than tell a child, If you do thus or thus you will be more esteemed than your brothers or sisters.' The rod proFf duces duces an effect which terminates in itself. A child is afraid of being whipped, and gets his task, and there's an end on't; whereas, by exciting emulations and comparisons of superiority, you lay the foundations of lasting mischief; you make brothers and sisters hate each other." Johnson, after having resided for some time at the house of his uncle, Cornelius Ford, was, at the age of fifteen, removed to the school of Stourbridge, in Worcestershire, of which Mr. Wentworth was then master. He remained at Stourbridge little more than a year, and then returned home, where he may be said to have loitered for two years in a state very unworthy of his uncommon abilities, of which he had already given several proofs. On the 31st of October, 1728, being then in his nineteenth year, he went to Oxford, was entered a commoner of Pembroke-College, and placed under the tuition of Mr. Jorden, fellow of the college, of whose learning and abilities he does not appear to have entertained any very exalted idea, but for whose worth he had so high a love and respect, that he used to say, "whenever a young man becomes Jorden's pupil, he becomes his son." Soon after his introduction to this seminary, he translated, by the desire of Mr. Jorden, Pope's Messiah into Latin verse, and performed it with such uncommon rapidity, and in so masterly a manner, that he obtained great applause from it, which ever after kept him high in the estimation of his college, and indeed of all the university. The rapidly-increasing energies of Johnson's mind were, soon after this proof of his genius, unfortunately suspended by the "morbid melancholy" which was lurking in his constitution, and to which may be ascribed those particularities, and that aversion to regular life, which at a very early period marked his character. While he was at Litchfield, in the college vacation of the year 1729, he felt himself overwhelmed with a horrible hypochondria, and was sometimes so languid and inefficient, that he could not distinguish the hour upon the town clock. Upon the first violent attack of this disorder, he strove to overcome it by forcible exertions; but all in vain; and his distress became so intolerable, that he applied to Dr. Swinfen, physician, in Litchfield, his godfather, and put into his hands a state of his case written in Latin, with such extraordinary acuteness, research, and eloquence, that he shewed it to several persons as an instance of the deep erudition of his patient and godson; but Johnson was so much offended by this breach of confidence, that he was never afterwards fully reconciled to him. The medical advice of Dr. Swinfen does not seem to have been very effectual; for we are informed, that the oppression and distraction of this disease were so great, that insanity was the object of his most dismal apprehension, and that he fancied himself seized by it, or approaching to it, at the time when he was giving proofs of a more than ordinary soundness and vigour of judgement. The particular course of his reading while at Oxford, and during the time of vacation which he passed at home, cannot be traced, but it was most probably deep and varied; until, in the autumn of the year 1731, the res angusta domi, and the neglect of a friend to whom he had trusted for support, obliged him to leave college, after having been a member of it little more than three years, without a degree, or the advantage of a complete academical education. Johnson, under all these inauspicious circumstances, returned to his native city, destitute, and not knowing how he should gain even a decent livelihood; and to add to his embarrassments, his father, whose misfortunes in trade rendered him unable to support his son, died, in the month of December following, in a state of poverty, thus described in one of Johnson's little diaries of the following year: "1732, Julii 15. Undecim aureas deposui, quo die quicquid ante matris funus (quod serum sit precor) de paternis bonis sperari licet, viginti libras accepi. Usque adeo mihi fortuna fingendaest. Interea, ne paupertatevires animi languescant, nec in flagitia egestas abigat, cavendum :" a circumstance which, as Mr. Boswell justly observes, displays his spirit and virtuous dignity of mind. In this forlorn state, Johnson accepted of an offer to be employed as usher in the school of Market-Bosworth, in Leicestershire, to which place he went on foot on the 16th of July. The aversion which he soon felt from the uniform tenor and painful drudgery of this situation was greatly enhanced by a disagreement between him and sir Woolston Dixey, the patron of the school, in whose house, as Mr. Boswell has been told, he officiated as a kind of domestic chaplain, so far at least as to say grace at table, and where he was treated with what he represented as such intolerable harshness, that he relinquished a situation which all his life afterwards he recollected with the strongest aversion. Being now totally unoccupied, he was invited by Mr. Hector to pass some time with him at Bir mingham, as his guest, at the house of Mr. Warren, an eminent bookseller, with whom Mr. Hector boarded and lodged. Here he executed his first prose work, a translation of Lobo's Voyages to Abyssinia, from the French into the English language, which was completed and published in 1735, with London upon the title page, though it was in reality printed at Birmingham. Johnson returned to Litchfield early in 1734, and in August, that year, published proposals for printing by subscription the Latin Poems of Politian ; but there were not subscribers enough to ensure a sufficient sale, so the work never appeared, and, probably, never was executed. During the course of this year he returned again to Birmingham, and in the month of November wrote an anonymous letter to Mr. Cave, the original compiler and editor of the Gentleman's Magazine, pointing out the defects of the poetical article of that Miscellany, and offering, on reasonable terms, "sometimes to fill a column." This letter was answered the ensuing month, but whether any thing was done in consequence of it we are not informed. On the 9th July, 1735, Johnson was married to Mrs. Porter, of Birmingham; but the marriage ceremony was performed at Derby, for which place the bride and bridegroom set out on horseback. Of this event Johnson afterwards gave to Mr. Boswell the following curious account: "Sir, it was a love marriage upon both sides. Sir, she had got into read old romances, and had her head the fantastical notion that a woman of spirit should use her lover like a dog. So, Sir, at first she told me that I rode too fast, and she could not keep up with me; and, when I rode a little slower, she Ff2 passed |