1762.

Etat. 53.

Mr. Murphy and the late Mr. Sheridan feverally contended for the diftinction of having been the first who mentioned to Mr. Wedderburn that Johnson ought to have a penfion. When I fpoke of this to Lord Loughborough, wishing to know if he recollected the prime mover in the bufinefs, he faid, "All his friends affifted:" and when I told him that Mr. Sheridan ftrenuously afferted his claim to it, his Lordfhip faid, "He rang the bell." And it is but just to add, that Mr. Sheridan told me, that when he communicated to Dr. Johnfon that a penfion was to be granted him, he replied, in a fervour of gratitude, "The English language does not afford me terms adequate to my feelings on this occafion. I must have recourse to the French. I am penetré with his Majefty's goodness." When I repeated this to Dr. Johnson, he did not contradict it.

His definitions of pension and penfioner, partly founded on the fatirical verses of Pope, which he quotes, may be generally true; and yet every body must allow, that there may be, and have been, inftances of penfions given and received upon liberal and honourable terms. Thus, then, it is clear, that there was nothing inconsistent or humiliating in Johnson's accepting of a penfion fo unconditionally and fo honourably offered to him.

This year his friend Sir Joshua Reynolds paid a vifit of fome weeks to his native county, Devonshire, in which he was accompanied by Johnson, who was much pleased with this jaunt, and declared he had derived from it a great acceffion of new ideas. He was entertained at the feats of feveral noblemen and gentlemen in the west of England; but the greatest part of the time was paffed at Plymouth, where the magnificence of the navy, the ship-building and all its circumftances, afforded him a grand fubject of contemplation. The Commiffioner of the Dock-yard paid him the compliment of ordering the yacht to convey him and his friend to the Eddystone, to which they accordingly failed. But the weather was fo tempeftuous that they could not land.

Reynolds and he were at this time the guests of Dr. Mudge, the celebrated furgeon, and now physician of that place, not more diftinguished for quicknefs of parts and variety of knowledge, than loved and esteemed for his amiable manners; and here Johnson formed an acquaintance with Dr. Mudge's father, that very eminent divine, the Reverend Zachary Mudge, Prebendary of Exeter, who was idolifed in the weft, both for his excellence as a preacher and the uniform perfect propriety of his private conduct. He preached a fermon purposely that Johnson might hear him; and we fhall fee afterwards that Johnson honoured his memory by drawing his character. While Johnson was at Plymouth, he faw a great many of its inhabitants, and was not sparing

of

of his very entertaining converfation. It was here that he made that frank and 1762. truly original confession, that "ignorance, pure ignorance," was the caufe of Etat. 53. a wrong definition in his Dictionary of the word paftern", to the no finall furprize of the Lady who put the question to him; who having the most profound reverence for his character, fo as almoft to fuppofe him endowed with infallibility, expected to hear an explanation (of what, to be fure, feemed strange to a common reader,) drawn from fome deep-learned fource with which fhe was unacquainted.

Sir Joshua Reynolds, to whom I am obliged for my information concerning this excursion, mentions a very characteristical anecdote of Johnson while at Plymouth. Having obferved that in confequence of the Dock-yard a new town had arisen about two miles off as a rival to the old; and knowing from his fagacity, and just observation of human nature, that it is certain if a man hates at all, he will hate his next neighbour; he concluded that this new and rifing town could not but excite the envy and jealousy of the old, in which conjecture he was very foon confirmed; he therefore fet himself refolutely on the fide of the old town, the established town, in which his lot was caft, confidering it as a kind of duty to stand by it. He accordingly entered warmly into its interests, and upon every occafion talked of the dockers, as the inhabitants of the new town were called, as upstarts and aliens. Plymouth is very plentifully fupplied with water by a river brought into it from a great distance, which is so abundant that it runs to waste in the town. The Dock, or New-town, being totally deftitute of water, petitioned Plymouth that a small portion of the conduit might be permitted to go to them, and this was now under confideration. Johnson, affecting to entertain the paffions of the place, was violent in opposition; and half-laughing at himself for his pretended zeal, where he had no concern, exclaimed, "No, no! I am against the dockers; I am a Plymouth-man. Rogues! let them die of thirst. They shall not have a drop!" In 1763 he furnished to "The Poetical Calendar," published by Fawkes and Woty, a character of Collins, which he afterwards ingrafted into his entire life of that admirable poet, in the collection of lives which he wrote for the body of English poetry, formed and published by the booksellers of London. His account of the melancholy depression with which Collins was severely afflicted, and which brought him to his grave, is, I think, one of the most tender and interesting paffages in the whole feries of his writings. He alfo favoured Mr. Hoole with the Dedication of his tranflation of Tasso to

7 See p. 163.

1763.

the

1763.

Etat. 54.

the Queen,* which is fo happily conceived and elegantly expreffed, that I can-
not but point it out to the peculiar notice of
my
readers.

This is to me a memorable year, for in it I had the happiness to obtain the acquaintance of that extraordinary man whose memoirs I am now writing; an acquaintance which I fhall ever efteem as one of the moft fortunate circumstances in my life. Though then but two-and-twenty, I had for several years read his works with delight and inftruction, and had the highest reverence for their authour, which had grown up in my fancy into a kind of mysterious veneration, by figuring to myself a state of folemn elevated abstraction, in which I fuppofed him to live in the immenfe metropolis of London. Mr. Gentleman, a native of Ireland, who paffed fome years in Scotland as a player, and as an inftructor in the English language, a man whofe talents and worth were depreffed by misfortunes, had given me a representation of his figure and manner; and during my first visit to London, which was for three months in 1760, Mr. Derrick the poet, who was Gentleman's friend and countryman, flattered me with hopes that he would introduce me to Johnson, an honour of which I was very ambitious. But he never found an opportunity, which made me doubt that he had promised to do what was not in his power, till Johnson fome years afterwards told me, "Derrick, Sir, might very well have introduced you. I had a kindness for Derrick, and am forry he is dead."

In the fummer of 1761 Mr. Thomas Sheridan was at Edinburgh, and delivered lectures upon the English Language and Publick Speaking to large and refpectable audiences. I was often in his company, and heard him frequently expatiate upon Johnson's extraordinary knowledge, talents, and virtues, repeat his pointed fayings, defcribe his particularities, and boast of his being his guest fometimes till two or three in the morning. At his house I hoped to have many opportunities of feeing the fage, as Mr. Sheridan obligingly affured me I should not be disappointed.

When I returned to London in the end of 1762, to my furprize and regret I found an irreconcileable difference had taken place between Johnson and Sheridan. A penfion of two hundred pounds a year had been given to Sheridan. Johnson, who as has been already mentioned, thought flightingly of Sheridan's art, upon hearing that he was alfo penfioned, exclaimed, "What! have they given him a penfion? Then it is time for me to give up mine." Whether this proceeded from a momentary indignation, as if it were an affront to his exalted merit that a player fhould be rewarded in the fame manner with him, or was the fudden effect of a fit of peevifhness, it was unluckily faid, and, indeed, cannot be juftified. Mr. Sheridan's pension was

granted

1763.

granted to him not as a player, but as a sufferer in the cause of government, when he was manager of the Theatre Royal in Ireland, when parties ran high tat. 54. in 1753. And it must also be allowed that he was a man of literature, and had confiderably improved the arts of reading and speaking with diftinctness

and propriety.

Besides, Johnson should have recollected that Mr. Sheridan taught pronunciation to Mr. Alexander Wedderburn, whose sister was married to Sir Harry Erskine, an intimate friend of Lord Bute, who was the favourite of the King; and furely the most outrageous Whig will not maintain, that, whatever ought to be the principle in the difpofal of offices, a penfion ought never to be granted from any bias of court connection. Mr. Macklin, indeed, shared with Mr. Sheridan the honour of instructing Mr. Wedderburn; and though it was too late in life for a Caledonian to acquire the genuine English cadence, yet fo fuccessful were Mr. Wedderburn's inftructors, and his own unabating endeavours, that he got rid of the coarse part of his Scotch accent, retaining only as much of the "native wood-note wild," as to mark his country; which, if any Scotchman should affect to forget, I should heartily despise him. Notwithftanding the difficulties which are to be encountered by those who have not had the advantange of an English education, he by degrees formed a mode of fpeaking, to which Englishmen do not deny the praise of elegance. Hence his distinguished oratory, which he exerted in his own country as an advocate in the Court of Seffion, and a ruling elder of the Kirk, has had its fame and ample reward, in much higher fpheres. When I look back on this noble perfon at Edinburgh, in fituations fo unworthy of his brilliant powers, and behold LORD LOUGHBOROUGH at London, the change seems almost like one of the metamorphofes in Ovid; and as his two preceptors, by refining his utterance, gave currency to his talents, we may say in the words of that poet, "Nam vos mutaftis."

I have dwelt the longer upon this remarkable inftance of fuccefsful parts and affiduity, because it affords animating encouragement to other gentlemen of North-Britain to try their fortunes in the fouthern part of the island, where they may hope to gratify their utmost ambition; and now that we are one people by the Union, it would furely be illiberal to maintain that they have not an equal title with the natives of any other part of his Majesty's dominions.

Johnson complained that a man who disliked him repeated his sarcasm to Mr. Sheridan, without telling him what followed, which was, that after a pause he added, "However, I am glad that Mr. Sheridan has a penfion, for he is a very good man." Sheridan could never forgive this hafty contemptuous

expreffion. It rankled in his mind; and though I informed him of all that Johnfon faid, and that he would be very glad to meet him amicably, he pofitively declined repeated offers which I made, and once went off abruptly from a house where he and I were engaged to dine, because he was told that Dr. Johnfon was to be there. I have no fympathetick feeling with fuch perfevering refentment. It is painful when there is a breach between those who have lived together focially and cordially; and I wonder that there is not, in all fuch cafes, a mutual wifh that it fhould be healed. I could perceive that Mr. Sheridan was by no means fatisfied with Johnson's acknowledging him to be a good man. That could not footh his injured vanity. I could not but smile, at the fame time that I was offended, to observe Sheridan in the Life of Swift, which he afterwards published, attempting, in the writhings of his refentment, to depreciate Johnfon, by characterifing him "A writer of gigantick fame in these days of little men;" that very Johnson whom he once fo highly admired and venerated.

This rupture with Sheridan deprived Johnson of one of his most agreeable refources for amusement in his lonely evenings; for Sheridan's well-informed, animated, and bustling mind never fuffered converfation to ftagnate; and Mrs. Sheridan was a moft agreeable companion to an intellectual man. She was fenfible, ingenious, unaffuming, yet communicative. I recollect, with fatisfaction, many pleasing hours which I passed with her under the hospitable roof of her husband, who was to me a very kind friend. Her novel, entitled "Memoirs of Miss Sydney Biddulph," contains an excellent moral, while it inculcates a future state of retribution; and what it teaches is impreffed upon the mind by a series of as deep diftrefs as can affect humanity. Johnfon paid her this high compliment upon it: "I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers fuffer so much."

Mr. Thomas Davies the actor, who then kept a bookfeller's fhop in Ruffelftreet, Covent-garden, told me that Johnson was very much his friend, and came frequently to his house, where he more than once invited me to meet him; but by fome unlucky accident or other he was prevented from coming.

to us.

Mr. Thomas Davies was a man of good understanding and talents, with the advantage of a liberal education. Though fomewhat pompous, he was an entertaining companion; and his literary performances have no inconfiderable fhare of merit. He was a friendly and very hofpitable man. Both he and his wife, (who has been celebrated for her beauty,) though upon the stage • P. 447.

for