student, Mr. Topham Beauclerk; who though their opinions and modes of life were so different, that it seemed utterly improbable that they should at all agree, had so ardent a love of literature, so acute an understanding, such elegance of manners, and so well discerned the excellent qualities of Mr. Langton, a gentleman eminent not only for worth and learning, but for an inexhaustible fund of entertaining conversation, that they became intimate friends. ТОРНАМ BEAUCLERK. Johnson, soon after this acquaintance began, passed a considerable time at Oxford. He at first thought it strange that Langton should associate so much with one who had the character of being loose, both in his principles and practice; but, by degrees, he himself was fascinated. Mr. Beauclerk's being of the St. Alban's family, and having, in some particulars, a resemblance to Charles II., contributed, in Johnson's imagination, to throw a lustre upon his other qualities; and in a short time, the moral, pious Johnson, and the gay, dissipated Beauclerk, were companions. "What a coalition!" said Garrick, when he heard of this, "I shall have my old friend to bail out of the Round-house." But I can bear testimony that it was a very agreeable association. Beauclerk was too polite, and valued learning and wit too much, to offend Johnson by sallies of infidelity or licentiousness; and Johnson delighted in the good qualities of Beauclerk, and hoped to correct the evil. Innumerable were the scenes in which Johnson was amused by these young men. Beauclerk could take more liberty with him, than any body with whom I ever saw him; but, on the other hand, Beauclerk was not spared by his respectable companion, when reproof was proper. Beauclerk had such a propensity to satire, that at one time Johnson said to him, "You never open your mouth but with the intention to give pain; and you have often given me pain, not from the power of what you said, but from seeing your intention." At another time applying to him, with a slight alteration, a line of Pope, he said, "Thy love of folly, and thy scorn of fools. Every thing thou dost shows the one, and every thing thou say'st, the other." At another time he said to him, "Thy body is all vice, and thy mind all virtue." Beauclerk not seeming to relish the compliment Johnson said, "Nay, Sir, Alexander the Great, marching in triumph into Babylon, could not have desired to have had more said to him." Johnson was some time with Beauclerk at his house at Windsor, where he was entertained with experiments in natural philosophy. One Sunday, when the weather was very fine, Beauclerk enticed him, insensibly, to saunter about all the morning. They went into a churchyard, in the time of divine service, and Johnson laid himself down at his ease upon one of the tombstones. "Now, Sir," said Beauclerk, "you are like Hogarth's Idle Apprentice." When Johnson got his pension, Beauclerk said to him, in the humorous phrase of Falstaff, "I hope you'll now purge, and live cleanly, like a gentleman." One night when Beauclerk and Langton had supped at a tavern in London, and sat till about three in the morning, it came into their heads to go and knock up Johnson, and see if they could prevail on him to join them in a ramble. They rapped violently at the door of his chambers in the Temple, till at last he appeared in his shirt, with his little black wig on the top of his head, instead of a nightcap, and a poker in his hand, imagining, probably, that some ruffians were coming to attack him. When he discovered who they were, and was told their errand, he smiled, and with great good humour agreed to their proposal: "What, is it you, you dogs! I'll have a frisk with you." He was soon dressed and they sallied forth together into Covent-garden, where the greengrocers and fruiterers were beginning to arrange their hampers, just come in from the country. Johnson made some attempts to help them; but the honest gardeners stared so at his figure and manner, and odd interference, that he soon saw his services were not relished. They then repaired to one of the neighbouring taverns, and made a bowl of that liquor called bishop, which Johnson had always liked; while, in joyous contempt of sleep, from which he had been roused, he repeated the festive lines, "Short, O short, then be thy reign, They did not stay long, but walked down to the Thames, took a boat, and rowed to Billingsgate. Beauclerk and Johnson were so well pleased with their amusement, that they resolved to persevere in dissipation for the rest of the day: but Langton deserted them, being engaged to breakfast with some young ladies. Johnson scolded him for "leaving his social friends, to go and sit with a set of wretched un-ided girls." Garrick being told of this ramble, said to him smartly, heard of your frolic t'other night. You'll be in the 'Chronicle." Upor 1 Johnson, as Mr. Kemble observes to me, might here have had in his thoughts the words of Sir John Brute (a character which doubtless he had seen represented by Garrick), who uses nearly the same expression in "The Provoked Wife," Act iii., sc. i.-MALONE. 2 Mr. Langton recollected, or Dr. Johnson repeated, the passage wrong. The lines are Lord Lansdowne's Drinking Song to Sleep, and run thus: "Short, very short, be then thy reign, For I'm in haste to laugh and drink again."-BOSWELL. which Johnson afterwards observed, "He durst not do such a thing. His wife would not let him!" He entered upon this year, 1753, with his usual piety, as appears from the following prayer, which I transcribed from that part of his diary which he burned a few days before his death : "Jan. 1, 1753, N.S., which I shall use for the future. "Almighty God, who hast continued my life to this day, grant that, by the assistance of thy Holy Spirit, I may improve the time which thou shalt grant me, to my eternal salvation. Make me to remember, to thy glory, thy judgments and thy mercies. Make me to consider the loss of my wife, whom thou hast taken from me, that it may dispose me, by thy grace, to lead the residue of my life in thy fear. Grant this, O Lord, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen." He now relieved the drudgery of his Dictionary, and the melancholy of his grief, by taking an active part in the composition of "The Adven-turer," in which he began to write, April 10, marking his essays with the signature T., by which most of his papers in that collection are distinguished: those, however, which have that signature, and also that of Mysargyrus, were not written by him, but, as I suppose, by Dr. Bathurst. Indeed, Johnson's energy of thought and richness of language are still more decisive marks than any signature. As a proof of this, my readers, I imagine, will not doubt that No. 39, on Sleep, is his; for it not only has the general texture and colour of his style, but the authors with whom he was peculiarly conversant are readily introduced in it in cursory allusion. The translation of a passage in Statius, quoted in that paper, and marked C. B., has been erroneously ascribed to Dr. Bathurst, whose Christian name was Richard. How much this amiable man actually contributed to "The Adventurer," cannot be known. Let me add, that Hawkesworth's imitations of Johnson are sometimes so happy, that it is extremely difficult to distinguish them, with certainty, from the compositions of his great archetype. Hawkesworth was his closest imitator, a circumstance of which that writer would once have been proud to be told; though when he had become elated by having risen into some degree of consequence, he, in a conversation with me, had the provoking effrontery to say he was not sensible of it. Johnson was truly zealous for the success of "The Adventurer;" and very soon after his engaging in it, he wrote the following letter : "TO THE REVEREND DR. JOSEPH WARTON. "DEAR SIR, March, 8, 1753. "I ought to have written to you before now, but I ought to do many things which I do not; nor can I, indeed, claim any merit from this letter; for being desired by the authors and proprietor of "The Adventurer," to look out for another hand, my thoughts necessarily fixed upon you, whose fund of literature will enable you to assist them, with very little interruption of your studies. 1 This is a slight inaccuracy. The Latin Sapphics, translated by C. B. in that paper, were written by Cowley, and are in his fourth book on Plants. MALONE. "They desire you to engage to furnish one paper a month, at two guineas a paper, which you may very readily perform. We have considered that a paper should consist of pieces of imagination, pictures of life, and disquisitions of literature. The part which depends on the imagination is very well supplied, as you will find when you read the paper; for descriptions of life, there is now a treaty almost made with an author and an authoress;1 and the province of criticism and literature they are very desirous to assign to the commentator on Virgil. "I hope this proposal will not be rejected, and that the next post will bring us your compliance. I speak as one of the fraternity, though I have no part in the paper, beyond now and then a motto; but two of the writers are my particular friends, and hope the pleasure of seeing a third united to them, will not be denied to, dear Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON." The consequence of this letter was, Dr. Warton's enriching the collection with several admirable essays. Johnson's saying, "I have no part in the paper, beyond now and then a motto," may seem inconsistent with his being the author of the papers marked T. But he had at this time written only one number; and, besides, even at any after period he might have used the same expression, considering it as a point of honour not to own them; for Mrs. Williams told me that, "as he had given those essays to Dr. Bathurst, who sold them at two guineas each, he never would own them; nay, he used to say he did not write them; but the fact was, that he dictated them while Bathurst wrote." I read to him Mrs. Williams's account: he smiled, and said nothing. 1 It is not improbable, that the "author and authoress, with whom a treaty was almost made, for descriptions of life," and who are mentioned in a manner that seems to indicate some connection between them, were Henry, and his sister Sally, Fielding, as she was then popularly called. Fielding had previously been a periodical essayist, and certainly was well acquainted with life in all its varieties, more especially within the precincts of London; and his sister was a lively and ingenious writer. To this notion it perhaps may be objected, that no papers in "The Adventurer" are known to be their productions. But it should be remembered, that of several of the essays in that work, the authors are unknown; and some of these may have been written by the persons here supposed to be alluded to. Nor would the objection be decisive, even if it were ascertained that neither of them contributed anything to "The Adventurer;" for the treaty above mentioned might afterwards have been broken off. The negotiator, doubtless, was Hawkesworth, and not Johnson. Fielding was at this time in the highest reputation; having, in 1751, produced his Amelia, of which the whole impression was sold off on the day of its publication.- MALONE. 2 The author, I conceive, is here in an error. He had before stated, that Johnson began to write in "The Adventurer" on April 10th (when No. 45 was published), above a month after the date of his letter to Dr. Warton. The two papers published previously with the signature T., and subscribed MYSARGYRUS (Nos. 34 and 41), were written, I believe, by Bonnel Thornton, who contributed also ali the papers signed A. This information I received several years ago; but do not precisely remember from whom I derived it. I believe, however, my informer was Dr. Warton. With respect to No. 39, on Sleep, which our author has ascribed to Johnson (see p. 170), even if it were written by him, it would not be inconsistent with his statement to Dr. Warton for it appeared on March 20th, near a fortnight after the date of Johnson's letter to that gentleman. But on considering it attentively, though the style bears a strong resemblance to that of Johnson, I believe it was written by his friend Dr. Bathurst, and perhaps touched in a few places by Johnson. Mr. Boswell has observed that "this paper not only has the general texture and colour of his style, but the authors with whom he was peculiarly conversant are readily introduced in it in cursory allusion." Now the authors mentioned in that paper are, Fontenelle, Milton, Ramazzini, Madlle. de Scuderi, Swift, Homer, Barratier Statius, Cowley, and Sir Thomas Browne. With many of these, doubtless, Johnson was particularly conversant; but I doubt whether he would have characterised the expression quoted from Swift as elegant; and with the works of Ramazzini it is very improbable that he should have been acquainted. Ramazzini was a celebrated physician, who died at Padua, in 1714, at the age of 81; with whose writings Dr. Bathurst may be supposed to have been conversant. So also with respect to Cowley: Johnson, without doubt, had read his Latin poem on Plants, but Bathurst's profession probably led him to read it with more attention than his friend had given to it; and Cowley's eulogy on the Poppy would more readily occur to the naturalist and the physician than to a more general reader. I believe, however, that the last paragrah of the paper on Sleep, in which Sir Thomas Browne is quoted to show the propriety of pravar before we lie down to rest, was added by Johnson.-MALONE. I am not quite satisfied with the casuistry by which the productions of one person are thus passed upon the world for the productions of another. I allow that not only knowledge, but powers and qualities of mind may be communicated, but the actual effect of individual exertion never can be transferred, with truth, to any other than its own original cause. One person's child may be made the child of another person by adoption, as among the Romans, or by the ancient Jewish mode of a wife having children borne to her upon her knees, by her handmaid. But these were children in a different sense from that of nature. It was clearly understood that they were not of the blood of their nominal parents. So in literary children, an author may give the profits and fame of his composition to another man, but cannot make that other the real author. A Highland gentleman, a younger branch of a family, once consulted me if he could not validly purchase the Chieftainship of his family from the Chief, who was willing to sell it. I told him it was impossible for him to acquire, by purchase, a right to be a different person from what he really was; for that the right of Chieftainship attached to the blood of primogeniture, and therefore was incapable of being transferred. I added, that though Esau sold his birthright, or the advantages belonging to it, he still remained the first-born of his parents; and that whatever agreement a chief might make with any or the clan, the Heralds' Office could not admit of the metamorphosis, of with any decency attest that the younger was the elder: but I did not convince the worthy gentleman. Johnson's papers in "The Adventurer " are very similar to those of "The Rambler;" but being rather more varied in their subjects,1 and 1 Dr. Johnson lowered and somewhat disguised his style in writing "The Adventurers" in order that his papers might pass for those of Dr. Bathurst, to whom he consigned the profits. This was Hawkesworth's opinion.-BURNEY. |