e M. Johnson, gether: Davy week, & Mr by & to see toget 1⁄2 either from e very good ill turn out a Dear Sir 1 obligd & ect. hum Serv e 6 Walmerley. Lichfield, 173.9 Mar. 2. liquors a practice to which he rigidly conformed for many years together, at different periods of his life.' 2 His Ofellus in the art of living in London, I have heard him relate, was an Irish painter, whom he knew at Birmingham, and who had practised his own precepts of economy for several years in the British capital. He assured Johnson, who, I suppose, was then meditating to try his fortune in London, but was apprehensive of the expense, “that thirty pounds a year was enough to enable a man to live there without being contemptible. He allowed ten pounds for clothes and linen. He said a man might live in a garret at eighteenpence a week; few people would inquire where he lodged; and if they did, it was easy to say, 'Sir, I am to be found at such a place.' By spending three-pence in a coffee-house, he might be for some hours every day in very good company; he might dine for sixpence, breakfast on bread and milk for a penny, and do without supper. On clean-shirt-day he went abroad, 1 At this time his abstinence from wine may, perhaps, be attributed to poverty, but in his subsequent life he was restrained from that indulgence by, as it appears, moral, or rather medical considerations. He found by experience that wine, though it dissipated for a moment, yet eventually aggravated the hereditary disease under which he suffered; and perhaps it may have been owing to a long course of abstinence, that his mental health seems to have been better in the latter than in the earlier portion of his life. He says, in his Prayers and Meditations (Aug. 17th, 1767), “By abstinence from wine and suppers, I obtained sudden and great relief, and had freedom of mind restored to me; which I have wanted for all this year, without being able to find any means of obtaining it." See also post, Sept. 16th, 1773. These remarks are important, because depression of spirits is too often treated on a contrary system, from ignorance of, or inattention, to what may be its real cause.-Croker. 2 Both Boswell and Croker spell the name Ofellus, instead of Ofella. Neither is Croker right when, in a note on this passage, he calls Ofella, a Roman rustic. Horace (Sat. ii. 2. 133) informs us that, in his youth, Ofella was the owner of an estate near Venusia, which was taken from him and conferred on a veteran named Umbrenus. "Nunc ager Umbreni sub nomine, nuper Ofellæ and that as "colonus," he rented a farm on the estate which had been formerly his own.-Editor. |