a long oratorio with Mrs. Thrale that Johnson composed the sapphics,

In Theatro :

"Inter æquales sine felle liber,

Codices veri studiosus inter

Rectius vives; sua quisque carpat
Gaudia gratus,'

which stanza the lively lady paraphrased thus:

"The social club, the lonely tower,

Far better suit thy midnight hour;
Let each according to his power

In worth or wisdom shine!"

Her imitation is the more notable in that, unlike her original, it gives the names of the singers,-Guadagni, Bates, Mrs. Brent. "He (Johnson) was for the most part an exceedingly bad play-house companion," says Mrs. Thrale, "as his person drew people's eyes upon the box, and the loudness of his voice made it difficult for me to hear anybody but himself." These peculiarities, however, must have been merits on the great night when She Stoops to Conquer was produced at Covent Garden, and this must also have been his greatest theatrical appearance. "All eyes were upon Johnson," writes Richard Cumberland in his Memoirs. He "sate in a front row of a side box, and when he laughed everybody thought themselves warranted to roar." Not without reason was it that the grateful author dedicated his masterpiece to his old friend.

Once, at St. Andrew's, where Johnson was sadly viewing the ruins of religious magnificence, someone casually mentioned dinner. “Ay, ay,” said he, "amidst all these sorrowful scenes, I have no objection to dinner." Nor had he ever, for it was a theme upon which he uttered many memorable, and some contradictory, things. "There is a time of life, Sir," he observed to Burke, in vindication of an appetite rather ravenous than refined, "when a man requires the repairs of a table"; and he spoke with undisguised contempt of those who did not mind, or pretended not to mind, what they ate. When cookery pleased him he praised it, and praised it heartily. But this did not prevent him from dilating upon abstemiousness, and levelling his tirads against "gulosity," to an attack upon which he

Boswell's well-known account of

devoted No. 206 of the Rambler. his mode of eating is, let us trust, exaggerated; but his horror of his own company, and his capabilities as a vigorous trencherman, made him a willing diner-out, especially after Mrs. Johnson's death in 1752. At this period, the roll of his friends is affirmed to have been "extensive and various," ranging from the Earl of Orrery and Lord Southwell to an apothecary in Cork Street, Burlington Gardens (with whom he and Miss Williams generally dined every Sunday), and a tallow-chandler's wife on Snow Hill, "not in the learned way (says Francis Barber), "but a worthy good woman." Many of the remaining names were those of booksellers and printers, as Cave, Dodsley, Millar, Strahan, and Payne of

He

Paternoster Row, who published the first numbers of The Idler. It was at Edward Cave's, and probably at the St. John's Gate so familiar on Mr. Urban's titlepage, that he dined behind the screen; and heard Philip Stanhope's tutor, Harte, praise his Life of Richard Savage. must often have eaten, too, at Dodsley's in Pall Mall, the "Tully's Head" next the passage leading into King Street, or half-way between the site of the old Smyrna CoffeeHouse (now Messrs Harrison's) and the old Star and Garter Tavern. "Doddy, you know, is my patron," said Johnson of the author of Cleone; and indeed it was "Doddy," who not only suggested the Dictionary, but issued London, and Irene, and the Vanity of Human Wishes. With another of the proprietors of the Dictionary, Andrew Millar, "over-against St. Clement's Church, in the Strand" (No. 141), he must also have been on dining terms. "I respect Millar, Sir; he has raised the price of literature," he declared; and certainly poor muddle-headed Andrew seems to have dealt not illiberally by that "most singular genius," the author of Tom Jones and Amelia. There is also record of Johnson's dining at Tonson the Bookseller's" (in the Strand), probably the third of the name, since there was talk of Edwards's Canons of Criticism, which was only published under that title in 1748, when Jacob the First

b

and Jacob the Second had been gathered to their fathers. Then again there is Tom Davies of No. 8, Russell Street, Covent Garden, in whose back parlour, Boswell, having drunk tea with the bookseller's "very pretty wife," was first privileged to meet the object of his adoration, who, he tells us, came frequently to the house. And where Johnson came frequently, he dined.

But it is probable that he was to be found oftenest at Strahan's and the Dillys. Strahan was not only the printer of his favourite London Chronicle, but he was also Printer to the King; and, like Cave and Hamilton, kept his coach; which equipage, in 1773, carried Johnson and Miss Williams to dine at Kensington House with James Elphinston, who has the credit of producing the worst translation of Martial on record. At this date Strahan's house and house of business was only a short distance from Bolt Court, being in New Street, to which he had moved from Printing House Square in Blackfriars. Strahan must certainly have been a notable as well as a fortunate man. He foresaw the fame of Gibbon; was the trusted legatee of Hume, and the "friendly agent" of Johnson, to whom he acted as amateur banker and pension collector. The Dillys, Edward and Charles, lived at No. 22 in the Poultry. They gave excellent dinners, and were famous for their hospitality to literary men. Goldsmith, Toplady, Scott of Amwel., Dr. Lettsom (the other Bolt Court doctor), Orme the historian, Miss Seward, Capel Lofft, Beattie,—are some of the guests who are mentioned by Boswell. But the most interesting of the Poultry gatherings is that in which Boswell, with infinite adroitness, contrived to bring together Johnson and Wilkes. Wilkes first subjugated Johnson's "surly virtue by insidious ministrations to his appetite. By and by they were amicably discussing Dryden and Horace, and "breaking jokes upon the Scots." Eventually, they became "quite frank and easy"; and when Johnson got back to Bolt Court, Boswell, to his supreme gratification, heard his illustrious friend tell Miss Williams "how much he had been pleased with Mr. Wilkes's company, and what an agreeable day he had passed."

99

Booksellers and printers, however, whether coach-keepers or not, played but a small part in the ever growing list of the Doctor's acquaintances, which included not a few persons of quality besides

Lord Orrery and Lord Southwell. "He associated," says Boswell, returning to the subject, "with persons the most widely different in manners, abilities, rank and accomplishments. He was at once the companion of the brilliant Colonel Forrester of the Guards, who wrote The Polite Philosopher, and of the awkward and uncouth Robert Levett; of Lord Thurlow, and Mr. Sastres, the Italian Master." Now he was the guest of that "beautiful, gay and fascinating Lady Craven," whose play of The Sleep Walker Walpole printed at the Strawberry Hill Press; now at General Paoli's in South Audley Street, where Goldsmith is also of the party, and receives a notable compliment from the Corsican leader, à propos of a passage in She Stoops to Conquer. "Monsieur Goldsmith est comme la mer, qui jette des perles et beaucoup d'autres belles choses, sans s'en apercevoir,”—and Goldsmith might well be pleased. Now Johnson is at General Oglethorpe's, discussing duels and the siege of Belgrade, or luxury and the Cato of Mr. Addison; now in the Twickenham meadows with Cambridge "the Everything," as Walpole called the author of the Scribleriad, delivering a spoken essay on Gay and ballad opera, or criticising the character of Sir Roger de Coverley. He was often at those ill-regulated feasts of Reynolds' in Leicester Fields, where the company was so much better than the cooking; and he was also often in the Harley Street home of Sir Joshua's rival, that courtly Allan Ramsay, who, if he could not paint as well as Reynolds, was his equal as a converser, and his superior as a host. At Beauclerk's, at the Adelphi or Muswell Hill,-or at Langton's lodgings at New Bond Street, he would always be welcome; and he must often have dined with Richardson at Salisbury Court, or with his favourite Fanny Burney under the painted ceilings of Newton's old (and still existent) dwelling-place in St. Martin's Street. Garrick's villa at Hampton, and his town house at 5, Adelphi Terrace, were also well known to him, and his visits to the latter continued during Mrs. Garrick's widowhood, for Boswell gives a glowing account of a select party there in 1781, after her Davy's death. It was "one of the happiest days that he remembered to have enjoyed in the whole course of his life," he says. The company consisted of Mrs. Garrick's "Chaplain," Hannah More; the Honourable Mrs. Boscawen, relict of that gallant Admiral who beat

1

the French at Louisburg and Lagos Bay; Miss Elizabeth Carter of Epictetus fame; Dr. Burney, Reynolds and Johnson. They were all in fine spirits, and Boswell's enthusiasm overflowed. "I believe," he whispered to Mrs. Boscawen, "this is as much as can be made of life." When he and Johnson walked away, they paused by the rails of the Adelphi, then overlooking the Thames, but now high and dry above the Victoria Embankment Gardens, and Boswell reminded his companion of the two friends, both dead, who had lived in the buildings behind them-Beauclerk and Garrick. "Ay, Sir," said Johnson, tenderly, "and two such friends as cannot be supplied." Lastly to make an end of hospitable houses-there were the Thrales, in the Borough, in Argyle Street, and at Streatham Place, whose doors were always open to him. Streatham Place, the best known of these, where he played at chemistry and eat peaches with Susan Burney, passed away in 1863; and nothing now remains in the neighbourhood to call up the memory of the pleasant white mansion with its plantations and park, where cattle, dogs and poultry ran "freely about without annoying each other," and where the Doctor had a walk to himself, and a summer-house to read and write in.

But even dinners with Dilly, with Ramsay, and with Thrale were not—one may suspect-the high water mark of the Doctor's happiness. These, after all, were formal entertainments, and, like Sancho Panza, he loved freedom at his food. "There is no private house," he told Boswell in 1776, "in which people can enjoy themselves so well, as at a capital tavern. . . . At a tavern you are sure you are welcome; and the more noise you make, the more trouble you give, the more good things you call for, the welcomer you are. No servants will attend you with the alacrity which waiters do, who are incited by the prospect of an immediate reward in proportion as they please. No, sir; there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.” To Hawkins he said much the same, when he declared "that a tavern chair was the throne of human felicity." With such opinions it is not surprising that, rightly or wrongly, many of the places of entertainment in his immediate neighbourhood are associated with his name; and Leigh Hunt hardly exaggerates when he suggests that Johnson had probably been in every tavern and coffee-house in his favourite