flight, there are parts of it which exhibit his best manner in full vigour. I had 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 : "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 blessed 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 polity 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 enquirer, 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 distinguished by nothing more certainly than an eminent degree of curiosity; 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.” [1734.] 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 : "Angeli Politiani Poemata Latina, quibus, Notas, cum historiâ Latina poeseos, à Petrarchæ ævo ad Politiani tempora deductâ, et vitâ Politiani fusius quam antihac enarratâ, addidit SAM. JOHNSON." It appears that his brother Nathanael had taken up his father's trade; for it is mentioned, that "subscriptions are taken in by the Editor, or N. Johnson, bookseller, of Lichfield."1 Notwithstanding the merit of Johnson, and the cheap price at which this translation, with its accompanyments, was offered, there were not subscribers enough to insure a sufficient sale; so the work never appeared, and, probably, never was executed. We find him again this year at Birmingham, and there is preserved the following letter from him to Mr. Edward The book was to contain more than thirty sheets, the price to be two shillings and six-pence at the time of subscribing, and two shillings and six-pence at the delivery of a perfect book in quires. 1 The brothers do not appear to have agreed very well. There was some jealousy between them as to their share of their mother's affection.-(Autob.) A letter of Nathaniel's was lately sold at Lichfield, in which he complained to his mother of his brother's treatmenthe had scarcely "used him with common civility. I believe I shall go to Georgia he adds, "in a fortnight." Johnson paid him an affectionate tribute in the Latin inscription which commemorates the virtues of his family-"vires et animi et corporis multa polli cerentur." Johnson, a short time before his death, wrote to a lady near Frome to know whether anything was remembered of a near relative of his, long since dead; and, from the tender interest he shows, the trade of bookbinder being the same, and his coldness to his other male relatives. Nathaniel may have been the person meant : "It may be, Madam, in your power to gratify my curiosity. Your servants, I His Cave, the original compiler and editor of the Gentleman'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 on authours ancient or modern, forgotten poems that deserve revival, or loose pieces, like Floyer's, worth preserving. By this method your literary article, for so it might be called, will, he thinks, be better recommended to the publick, than by low jests, aukward buffoonery, or the dull scurrilities of either party. b "If such a correspondence will be agreeable to you, be pleased to inform me in two posts, what the conditions are on which you shall expect it. Your late offer gives me no reason to distrust your generosity. If you engage in any literary projects besides this paper, I have other designs to impart, if I could be secure from having others reap the advantage of what I should hint. "Your letter, by being directed to S. Smith, to be left at the Castle in Birmingham, Warwickshire, will reach "Your humble servant." Mr. Cave has put a note on this letter, "Answered Dec. 2."1 But whether anything was done in consequence of it we are not informed. Miss Cave, the Grand-niece of Mr. Edward 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 nascellany, signed N; some of which I shall occasionally transcribe in the course of this work. b A prize of fifty pounds for the best poem "on Life, Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell."-See Gentleman's Magazine, Voi. IV. p. 60. N. Cor. et Ad.-Line 17, note: Sir John Floyer's Treatise on "Cold Baths."-Ge Mag. 1734, p. 147. 1 In this answer, Hawkins says, Cave accepted his services. Johnson had, from his early youth, been sensible to the influence of female charms. When at Stourbridge school, he was much enamoured of Olivia Lloyd, a young quaker, to whom he wrote a copy of verses, which I have not been able to recover; and I am assured by Miss Seward, that he conceived a tender passion for Miss Lucy Porter, daughter of the lady whom he afterwards married. Miss Porter was sent very young on a visit to Lichfield, where Johnson had frequent opportunities of seeing and admiring her; and he addressed to her the following verses, on her presenting him with a nosegay of myrtle: "What hopes, what terrors does thy gift create, The myrtle, ensign of supreme command, Soon must this bough, as you shall fix his doom, His juvenile attachments to the fair sex were, however, very transient; and it is certain, that he formed no criminal connection "Mrs. Piozzi, in her 'Anecdotes,' asserts that Johnson wrote this effusion of elegant tenderness not in his own person, but for a friend who was in love. But that lively lady is as inaccurate in this instance as in many others; for Miss Seward writes to me-'I know those verses were addressed to Lucy Porter, when he was enamoured of her in his boyish days, two or three years before he had seen her mother, his future wife. He wrote them at my grandfather's, and gave them to Lucy in the presence of my mother, to whom he shewed them on the instant. She used to repeat them to me, when I asked her for the verses Dr. Johnson gave her on a sprig of myrtle, which he had stolen or begged from her bosom We all know honest Lucy Porter to have been incapable of the mean vanity of applying to herself a compliment not intended for her."" Cor. et Ad.-Line 4: Instead of "and I am assured," &c., to the end of the paragraph, read, "but with what facility and elegance he could warble the amorous lay will appear from the following lines, which he wrote for his friend, Mr. Edmund Hector." Cor. et Ad.-Line 24: On tomb put the following note: "Mrs. Piozzi gives the following account of this little composition from Dr. Johnson's own relation to her, on 1 There are also some verses of his addressed to Miss Hickman, This would seem connected with the allusion iz his letter to Mr. Geo. Hickmar. (Croker, p. 20), in which he writes, "One's own disappointment is no inviting subject." whatsoever. Mr. Hector, who lived with him in his younger days in the utmost intimacy and social freedom, has assured me, that even at that ardent season his conduct was strictly virtuous in that respect; and that though he loved to exhilarate himself with wine, he never knew him intoxicated but once. In a man whom religious education has secured from licentious indulgences, the passion of love, when once it has seized him, is exceedingly strong; being unimpaired by dissipation, and totally her inquiring whether it was rightly attributed to him :-'I think it is now just forty years ago, that a young fellow had a sprig of myrtle given him by a girl he courted, and asked me to write him some verses that he might present her in return. I promised, but forgot; and when he called for his lines at the time agreed on-Sit still a moment, (says I) dear Mund, and I'll fetch them thee-So stepped aside for five minutes, and wrote the nonsense you now keep such a stir about.'-Anecdotes, p. 34. "In my first edition I was induced to doubt the authenticity of this account, by the following circumstantial statement in a letter to me from Miss Seward, of Lichfield :— 'I know those verses were addressed to Lucy Porter, when he was enamoured of her in his boyish days, two or three years before he had seen her mother, his future wife. He wrote them at my grandfather's, and gave them to Lucy in the presence of my mother, to whom he shewed them on the instant. She used to repeat them to me, when I asked her for the Verses Dr. Johnson gave her on a Sprig of Myrtle, which he had stolen or begged from her bosom. We all know honest Lucy Porter to have been incapable of the mean vanity of applying to herself a compliment not intended for her.' Such was this lady's statement, which I make no doubt she supposed to be correct; but it shews how dangerous it is to trust too implicitly to traditional testimony and ingenious inference; for Mr. Hector has lately assured me that Mrs. Piozzi's account is in this instance accurate, and that he was the person for whom Johnson wrote those verses, which have been erroneously ascribed to Mr. Hammond. "I am obliged in so many instances to notice Mrs. Piozzi's incorrectness of relation, that I gladly seize this opportunity of acknowledging, that however often, she is not always inaccurate." i "of 1 Thus characteristically had Boswell embroiled himself with the two literary ladies. He had made an amende to Mrs. Piozzi; but Miss Seward was deeply offended at her name being "very impo litely introduced on the first page what she called Mr. Boswell's " pamphlet," an expression that nettled him. The controversy is highly amusing, and shows the tartness and malice which underlay all the della cruscan sensibilities. Boswell had tried to propitiate her by writing for information, and by a gracious allusion on the subject of the "Verses on the Duck." She, however, began to attack Johnson and his biographer in letters signed "Benvoglio." The authorship was soon discovered, and the first result was Boswell's studiously-offensive note. The dispute was then transferred to the Gentlemans Magazine, where Boswell rallied the lady with great spirit and severity, as a specimen will show:-"Miss Seward may be assured that she is as much mis taken as to me as she certainly is as to Dr. Johnson. I am not her foe, though I committed to the flames those sheets of 'Johnsonian Narratives' with which I was favoured by her, among the almost innumerable communications which I obtained concerning the illustrious subject of my great biographical work. I, however, first extracted from these sheets all that I could possibly consider to be authentic. Nay, so desirous was I to give Miss Seward every advantage that, after refuting the impossible legend of Johnson's verses on a Duck, when he was but three years old, to which, for a woman's reason, she still pertinaciously adheres, I preserved the ingenious reflections which she, supposing it to be true, had made on that idle tale. And now, to put an end to all future disputation on the mighty points of the Duck and the Myrtle, which have been the cause of this war "This tumult in a vestal's veins." |