former time of your life. This is a great blessing, as it respects enjoyment of the present; and a blessing yet far greater, as it bestows power and opportunity to prepare for the future. "All sickness is a summons. But as you do not want exhortations, I will send you only my good wishes, and exhort you to believe the good wishes very sincerely, of, dear Madam, &c., -Pembroke MSS. "SAM. JOHNSON." JOHNSON TO MRS. ASTON. "DEAR MADAM, "London, Nov. 20, 1777. "Through Birmingham and Oxford I got without any difficulty or disaster to London, though not in so short a time as I expected, for I did not reach Oxford before the second day. I came home very much incommoded by obstructed respiration; but by vigorous methods am something better. I have since been at Brighthelmstone, and am now designing to settle. "Different things, Madam, are fit for different people. It is fit for me to settle, and for you to move. I wish I could hear of you at Bath; but I am afraid that is hardly to be expected from your resolute inactivity. My next hope is that you will endeavour to grow well where you are. I cannot help thinking that I saw a visible amendment between the time when I left you to go to Ashbourne, and the time when I came back. I hope you will go on mending and mending, to which exercise and cheerfulness will very much contribute. Take care, therefore, dearest Madam, to be busy and cheerful. "I have great confidence in the care and conversation of dear Mrs. Gastrell. It is very much the interest of all that know her that she should continue well, for she is one of few people that has the proper regard for those that are sick. She was so kind to me that I hope I never shall forget it; and if it be troublesome to you to write, I shall hope that she will do me another act of kindness by answering this letter, for I beg that I may hear from you by some hand or another. I am, Madam, your, &c., "SAM. JOHNSON." -Pembroke MSS. JOHNSON TO MRS. LUCY PORTER. "DEAR LOVE, "London, Nov. 20, 1777. "You ordered me to write you word when I came home. I have been for some days at Brighthelmstone, and came back on Tuesday night. "You know that when I left you I was not well; I have taken physic very diligently, and am perceptibly better; so much better that I hope by care and perseverance to recover, and see you again from time to time. "Mr. Nollekens, the statuary, has had my direction to send you a cast of my head. I will pay the carriage when we meet. Let me know how you like it; and what the ladies of your rout say to it. I have heard different opinions. I cannot think where you can put it. "I found every body here well. Miss [Thrale] has a mind to be womanly, and her womanhood does not sit well upon her. Please to make my compliments to all the ladies and all the gentlemen to whom I owe them, that is, to a great part of the town. I am, dear Madam, your most humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON." -Pearson MSS. JOHNSON TO MRS. GASTRELL. "DEAR MADAM, "Bolt Court, Dec. 23, 1777. "Your long silence portended no good: yet I hope the danger is not so near as our anxiety sometimes makes us fear. Winter is, indeed, to all that any distemper has enfeebled a very troublesome time; but care and caution may pass safely through it, and from spring and summer some relief is always to be hoped. When I came hither I fell to taking care of myself, and by physic and opium had the constriction that obstructed my breath very suddenly removed. My nights still continue very laborious and tedious, but they do not grow worse. I do not ask you, dear Madam, to take care of Mrs. Aston; I know how little you want such exhortations but I earnestly entreat her to take care of herself. Many lives are prolonged by a diligent attention to little things, and I am far from thinking it unlikely that she may grow better by degrees. However, it is her duty to try, and when we do our duty we have reason to hope. I am, dear Madam, "SAM. JOHNSON." Pembroke MSS. JOHNSON TO MRS. LUCY PORTER. "DEAR MADAM, "Feb. 19, 1778. "I have several little things to mention which I have hitherto neglected. You judged rightly in thinking that the bust would not please. It is condemned by Mrs. Thrale, Mrs. Reynolds, and Mrs. Garrick; so that your disapprobation is not singular. "These things have never cost me any thing, so that I do not much know the price. My bust was made for the Exhibition, and shown for honour of the artist, who is a man of reputation above any of the other sculptors. To be modelled in clay costs, I believe, twenty guineas; but the casts, when the model is made, are of no great price ; whether a guinea, or two guineas, I cannot tell. "When you complained for want of oysters, I ordered you a barrel weekly for a month; you sent me word sooner that you had enough, but I did not countermand the rest. If you could not eat them, could you not give them away? When you want any thing, send me word. I am very poorly, and have very restless and oppressive nights, but always hope for better. Pray for me. I am, &c., "And so you are alarmed, naughty lady? You might know that I was ill enough when Mr. Thrale brought you my excuse. Could you think that I missed the honour of being at (your) table for any slight reason? But you (have) too many to miss any one of us, and I am (proud) to be remembered at last. I am much better. A little cough (still) remains, which will not confine me. To houses (like yours) of great delicacy I am not willing to bring it. "Now, dear Madam, we must talk of business. Poor Davies, the bankrupt bookseller, is soliciting his friends to collect a small sum for the repurchase of part of his household stuff. Several of them gave It would be an honour to him to owe part of his him five guineas. relief to Mrs. Montagu. "Let me thank you, Madam, once more, for your inquiry; you have, perhaps, among your numerous train not one that values a kind word or a kind look more than, Madam, yours, &c., -Montagu MSS. "SAM. JOHNSON." II. BISHOP ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL. IF, as Johnson stated, June 9, 1784, in the lodge of Pembroke College, writing it with his own hand in the blank page of Boswell's "Journal of the Tour to the Hebrides," then still in manuscript, Archibald Campbell was in 1743 or 1744 above seventy-five years old,' he must have been born about the year 1669; of illustrious birth, being the grandson of the first Marquis of Argyle, beheaded "for high treason,” 1661, and nephew of the second and yet more celebrated Marquis, beheaded for his share in Monmouth's rebellion, 1685. He began life-so Johnson there said-by engaging in that unfortunate rising, when, if Johnson's dates be correct, he must have been a mere youth about sixteen years of age. Obliged to fly for complicity in this rebellion, he escaped to Surinam, where it would appear he lived for some time. When he returned, he returned zealous for monarchy and episcopacy. The date of his return is apparently not known. The next and most important fact recorded2 of him, is that, after the death of Bishop Sage in 1711, he was consecrated Bishop of the Scottish Episcopal Church at Dundee, Aug. 25, 1711. He was afterwards elected by the clergy Bishop of Aberdeen in 1721, but the choice was not approved by the College of Bishops. He seems, therefore, never to have resided or exercised episcopal functions at Aberdeen, or, indeed, in Scotland, but lived entirely at London. This singular relation to his diocese he terminated in the 1 See vol. iv., p. 326. 2 Lawson's History of the Scottish Episcopal Church, p. 211. 1 year 1725, by resignation, in consequence of his want of harmony with the Scottish episcopate, regarding what were then known as “the Usages," which were four in number, 1, Mixing water with the wine 2, Commemorating the faithful departed in the Communion Office: 3, Consecrating the elements by an express invocation; 4, Using the oblatory prayer before administering, as in the office of the Holy Communion in the Scottish Liturgy. For these "Usages" Bishop Campbel zealously contended, and his ecclesiastical sympathies tended, o course, to strengthen his friendship with the English nonjurors, and he became the "familiar friend of Hicks and Nelson." The step he took, according to Skinner, the ecclesiastical historian of Scotland. of forming a separate nonjuring communion in England distinct from the Sancroft line, venturing even on the extraordinary procedure of a "single consecration by himself without any assistance," showed, him to be the injudicious man Johnson said he was. His greatest and best known book on the "Middle State," which Johnson, during his visit to Inverary Castle, recommended to the Duchess, though full of learning, betrayed that credulity which Johnson mentions among his characteristics. He died June 16, 1744. He seems to have been a zealous collector of books. Johnson says he had seen in his possession a complete collection of books printed in Scotland before the Union. We may well share Boswell's wish that it had been kept entire; for the catalogue of its contents would have enabled us, either to confirm or confute Johnson's assertion, that very few books were printed in Scotland before the date of that event, 1707. This important and curious question seems never, either before Johnson's day or since, to have been broadly stated and fairly investigated. The history of the art of printing in Scotland was carried down only to the year 1600 by Herbert in his edition of Ames' "Typographical Antiquities." The same period has been illustrated by some admirable notes, read by Mr. J. T. Clark, keeper of the Advocates' Library, before the Library Association at the meeting of 1881, and published in the "Transactions" of that body for that year. The list of seventeenth-century Edinburgh printers, twenty-six in number, which Mr. Clark has appended to those notes, would seem to show that Johnson's assertion, coloured by his habitual prejudice against the pretensions of Scotland to learning, was neither accurate nor just. 1 Lawson's History, p. 229. 2 Quoted by Lawson, p. 237. Grub's Eccl. Hist. of Scotland, vol. iv., p. 31. |