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sperimens of different kinds, distinguishing | and art immortal; for sentiments like thine them by the Italic character.

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"Sure this is love, which heretofore I conceived the dream of idle maids, and wanton poets."

"Though no comets or prodigies foretold the ruin of Greece, signs which heaven must by another miracle enable us to understand, yet might it be foreshown, by tokens no less certain, by the vices which always bring it on."

were never to sink into nothing. Ithought all the thoughts of the fair had been to select the graces of the day, dispose the colours of the flaunting (flowing) robe, tune the voice and roll the eye, place the gem, choose the dress, and add new roses to the fading cheek, but-sparkling."

Thus in the tragedy:

"Illustrious maid, new wonders fix me thine;
Thy soul completes the triumphs of thy face;
The strongest effort of a female soul,
I thought, forgive my fair, the noblest aim,
Was but to choose the graces of the day,
To tune the tongue, to teach the eyes to roll,
Dispose the colors of the flowing robe,
And add new roses to the faded cheek."

I shall select one other passage, on account of the doctrine which it illustrates.

IRENE observes, "that the Supreme Being will accept of virtue, whatever outward circumstances it may be accompanied with, and may be delighted with varieties of worship: but is answered, That variety cannot affect that Being, who, infinitely happy in his own perfections, wants no external tifications; nor can infinite truth be delighted with falsehood; that though he may guide or pity those he leaves in darkness, he abandons those who shut their eyes against the beams of day.”

gra

Johnson's residence at Lichfield, on his return to it at this time, was only for three months; and as he had as yet seen but a small part of the wonders of the metropolis, he had little to tell his townsmen1. He This last passage is worked up in the related to me the following minute tragedy itself, as follows:

LEONTIUS.

-That power that kindly spreads The clouds, a signal of impending showers, To warn the wand'ring linnet to the shade, Beheld, without concern, expiring Greece, And not one prodigy foretold our fate.

DEMETRIUS.

A thousand horrid prodigies foretold it;
A feeble government, eluded laws,
A factious populace, luxurious nobles,
And all the maladies of sinking states.
When public villany, too strong for justice,
Shows bus bold front, the harbinger of ruin,
Can brave Leontius call for airy wonders,
Which cheats interpret, and which fools regard?
When some neglected fabrick nods beneath
The weight of years, and totters to the tempest,
Most heaven despatch the messengers of light,
Or wake the dead, to warn us of its fall?"

MAHOMET (to IRENE). "I have tried thee, and joy to find that thou deservest to be loved by Mahomet,—with a mind great his own Sure, thou art an errour of nature, and an exception to the rest of thy sex, 6

TOL. I.

1773.

anecdote of this period: "In the 20 Sept. last age, when my mother lived in London, there were two sets of people, those who gave the wall, and those who took it: the peaceable and the quarelsome. When I returned to Lichfield, after having been in London, my mother asked me whether I was one of those who gave the wall, or those who took it. Now it is fixed that every man keeps to the right; or, if one is taking the wall, another yields it; and it is never a dispute."

He now removed to London with Mrs. Johnson; but her daughter, who had lived with them at Edial, was left with her relations in the country. His lodgings were for some time in Woodstock-street, near Hanover-square, and afterwards in Castle

1 [On the contrary, if he lived after the manner of his Ofellus, he probably saw more of comresidence, constrained by the presence of Mrs. mon life than when he was, in his subsequent Johnson to more domestic and regular habits.— ED.]

[She very soon, it appears, resided with old Mrs. Johnson. See, ante p. 32. ED.]

10 Oct. 1779.

1. Exeter-street, off Catherine-street, Strand [1737].

The Gentleman's Magazine, begun and carried on by Mr. Edward Cave, under the name of Sylvanus Urban, had attracted the

street, near Cavendish-square. As there is something pleasingly interesting, to many, in tracing so great a man through all his different habitations, I shall present my read-notice and esteem of Johnson, in an emiers with an exact list of his lodgings and nent degree, before he came to London as houses, in order of time, which, in placid an adventurer in literature. He told me, condescension to my respectful curiosity, that when he first saw St. John's Gate, he one evening dictated to me, but the place where that deservedly popular without specifying how long he miscellany was originally printed, he "belived at each 1. held it with reverence." I suppose, indeed, that every young authour has had the same kind of feeling for the magazine or periodical publication which has first entertained him, and in which he has first had an opportunity to see himself in print, without the risk of exposing his name. I myself recollect such impressions from "The Scots Magazine," which was begun at Edinburgh in the year 1739, and has been ever conducted with judgment, accuracy, and propriety. I yet cannot help thinking of it with an affectionate regard. Johnson has dignified the Gentleman's Magazine by

2. Greenwich [1737].

3. Woodstock-street, near Hanoversquare [1737].

4. Castle-street, Cavendish-square, No. 6 [1738].

5. Boswell-court.

6. Strand.

7. Strand again.

8. Bow-street.

9. Holborn.

10. Fetter-lane.

11. Holborn again [at the Golden An- the importance with which he invests the

chor, Holborn-bars, 1748].

12. Gough-square [1748].

13. Staple-inn [1758].

14. Gray's-inn.

15. Inner Temple-lane, No. 1 [1760]. 16. Johnson-court, Fleet street, No. 7 [1765].

17. Bolt-court, Fleet-street, No. 8 [1777].

In the progress of his life I shall have occasion to mention some of them as connected with particular incidents, or with the writing of particular parts of his works. To some, this minute attention may appear trifling; but when we consider the punctilious exactness with which the different houses in which Milton resided have been traced by the writers of his life, a similar enthusiasm may be pardoned in the biographer of Johnson.

life of Cave; but he has given it still greater lustre by the various admirable Essays which he wrote for it.

Though Johnson was often solicited by his friends to make a complete list of his | writings, and talked of doing it, I believe with a serious intention that they should all be collected on his own account, he put it off from year to year, and at last died without having done it perfectly. I have one in his own hand-writing, which contains a certain number; I indeed doubt if he could have remembered every one of them, as they were so numerous, so various, and scattered in such a multiplicity of unconnected publications; nay, several of them published under the names of other persons, to whom he liberally contributed from the abundance of his mind. We must, therefore, be content to discover them, partly from occasional information given by him

His tragedy being by this time, as he thought, completely finished and fit for the stage, he was very desirous that it should be brought forward. Mr. Peter Garrick 2 [If, as Mr. Boswell supposes, Johnson looktold me, that Johnson and he went togeth-ed at St. John's Gate as the printing office of er to the Fountain tavern, and read it over, Cave, surely a less emphatical term than reverand that he afterwards solicited Mr. Fleet-man's Magazine had been at this time but six ence would have been more just. The Gentlewood, the patentee of Drury-lane theatre, years before the publick, and its contents were, to have it acted at his house; but Mr. Fleet- until Johnson himself contributed to improve it, wood would not accept it, probably because entitled to any thing rather than reverence; but it was not patronized by some man of high it is much more probable that Johnson's reverrank; and it was not acted till 1749, when ence was excited by the recollections connected his friend David Garrick was manager of with the ancient gate itself, the last relique of the that theatre. once extensive and magnificent priory of the heroic knights of the order of St. John of Jerusalem, suppressed at the dissolution, and destroyed by successive dilapidations. Its last prior, Sir William Weston, though compensated with the annual pension (enormous in those days) of 10007. died of a broken heart, on Ascension-day, 1540, the very day the house was suppressed.-ED.]

1 [This list Mr. Boswell placed under the date at which it was dictated to him. It seems more conveniently introduced here, and the editor has added, as far as he has discovered, the year in which Johnson first appears in any of these residences.-ED.]

to his friends, and partly from internal evidence!.

His first performance in the Gentlemen's Magazine, which for many years was his principal resource for employment and support, was a copy of Latin verses, in March, 1738, addressed to the editor in so happy a style of compliment, that Cave must have been destitute both of taste and sensibility?, had he not felt himself highly gratified.

"Ad URBANUM*.

URBANE, nullis fesse laboribus,
URBANE, nullis victe calumniis,
Cui fronte sertum in eruditá
Perpetuò viret et virebil;

Quid moliatur gens imitantium,
Quid et minetur, solicitus parùm,
Varare solis perge Musis,

Juxta animo studiisque felix.

Lingua procacis plumbea spicula,
Patens, superbo frange silentio;

Victrix per obstantes catervas
Sedulitas animosa tendet.

Intende nervos, fortis, inanibus
Pasurus olim nisibus æmuli;
Intende jam nervos,
habebis

Participes operæ Camanas.

Non ulla Musis pagina gratior,
Quam quæ severis ludicra Jungere
Norit, fatigatamque nugis

Utilibus recreare mentem.

While in the course of my narrative I enumerate has writings, I shall take care that my reader shall not be left to waver in doubt, between certanty and conjecture, with regard to their authenticity, and, for that purpose, shall mark with an asterisk (*) those which he acknowledged to his friends, and with a dagger (†) those which are ascertained to be his by internal evidence. When any other pieces are ascribed to him, I all give my reasons.-Boswell.

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It appears that he was now enlisted by Mr. Cave as a regular coadjutor in his magazine, by which he probably obtained a tolerable livelihood.

Hawk.

p. 50.

[This drew Johnson into a close intimacy with Cave: he was much at St. John's Gate, and taught Garrick the way thither. Cave had no great relish for mirth, but he could bear it; and having been told by Johnson, that his friend had talents for the theatre, and was come to London with a view to the profession of an actor, expressed a wish to see him in some comic character: Garrick readily complied; and, as Cave himself told me, with a little preparation of the room over the great arch of St. John's Gate, and with the assistance of a few journeymen printers, who were called together for the purpose of reading the other parts, represented, with all the graces of comic humour, the principal character in Fielding's farce of the MockDoctor.

Cave's temper was phlegmatic: and though he assumed, as the publisher of the Magazine, the name of Sylvanus Urban, he had few of those qualities that constitute the character of urbanity. Judge of his want of them by this question, which he once put to an authour: "Mr.- .3, I hear you have just published a pamphlet, and am told there is a very good paragraph in it, upon the subject of musick: did you write that yourself?" His discernment was also slow; and as he had already at his command some writers of prose and verse, who, in the language of booksellers, are called good hands, he was the backwarder in making advances, or courting an intima* [Taste and sensibility were very certainly not cy with Johnson. Upon the first approach the distinguishing qualities of Cave; but was this of a stranger, his practice was to continue ode, indeed, "a happy style of compliment?" sitting, a posture in which he was ever to Are "fronte sertum in eruditi"-" Lingua be found, and, for a few minutes, to continue plumbea, spicula"-"Victrix per obstantes silent: if at any time he was inclined to catervas"-Lycoris and Iris-the rose-the vi- begin the discourse, it was generally by alet-and the rainbow-in any way appropri- putting a leaf of the Magazine, then in the ate to the printer of St. John's Gate, his mag-press, into the hand of his visitor, and askazine, or his antagonists? How Johnson would ter life have derided, in another, such misapplied pedantry! Mr. Murphy surmises that "this ede may have been suggested to the mind of Johnen, who had meditated a history of the modern Latin poets (see ante, p. 58), by Casimir's ode to Pope Urban,

⚫ Urbane regum maxime, maxime
Urbane vatum.' "-ED.]

A translation of this Ode, by an unknown exrespondent, appeared in the Magazine for the month of May following-BosWELL. [As did,

1784, another, attributed by Mr. Nichols to Mr. Jackson, of Canterbury.-ED.]

ing his opinion of it. Sir John Hawkins remembered that, calling in on him once, he gave him to read the beautiful poem of Collins, written for Shakspeare's Cymbeline, "To fair Fidele's grassy tomb," which, though adapted to a particular circumstance in the play, Cave was for inserting in his Magazine, without any reference to the its beauty if it were so published: this he subject: Hawkins told him it would lose of could not see; nor could he be convinced of

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the propriety of the name Fidele: he thought | Senate of Lilliput," sometimes with feigned Pastora a better, and so printed it.

He was so incompetent a judge of Johnson's abilities, that, meaning at one time to dazzle him with the splendour of some of those luminaries in literature who favoured him with their correspondence, he told him that, if he would, in the evening, be at a certain ale-house in the neighbourhood of Clerkenwell, he might have a chance of seeing Mr. Browne, and one or two other of the persons employed in the Magazine. Johnson accepted the invitation; and was introduced by Cave, dressed in a loose horseman's coat2, and such a great bushy uncombed wig as he constantly wore, to the sight of Mr. Browne, whom he found sitting at the upper end of a long table, in a cloud of tobacco-smoke, and had his curiosity gratified.

Johnson saw very clearly those offensive particulars that made a part of Cave's character; but, as he was one of the most quicksighted men in discovering the good and amiable qualities of others, a faculty which he has displayed, as well in the life of Cave, as in that of Savage, printed among his works, so was he ever inclined to palliate their defects; and though he was above courting the patronage of a man, whom, for many reasons, he could not but hold cheap, he disdained not to accept it, when tendered with any degree of complacency.] At what time, or by what means, he had acquired a competent knowledge both of 3 French and Italian, I do not know; but he was so well skilled in them, as to be sufficiently qualified for a translator. That part of his labour which consisted in emendation and improvement of the productions of other contributors, like that employed in levelling ground, can be perceived only by those who had an opportunity of comparing the original with the altered copy. What we certainly know to have been done by him in this way was the Debates in both houses of Parliament, under the name of "The

denominations of the several speakers, sometimes with denominations formed of the letters of their real names, in the manner of what is called anagram, so that they might easily be deciphered. Parliament then kept the press in a kind of mysterious awe, which made it necessary to have recourse to such devices. In our time it has acquired an unrestrained freedom, so that the people in all parts of the kingdom have a fair, open, and exact report of the actual proceedings of their representatives and legislators, which in our constitution is highly to be valued; though, unquestionably, there has of late been too much reason to complain of the petulance with which obscure scribblers have presumed to treat men of the most respectable character and situation.

This important article of the Gentleman's Magazine was, for several years, executed by Mr. William Guthrie, a man who deserves to be respectably recorded in the literary annals of this country. He was descended of an ancient family in Scotland; but having a small patrimony, and being an adherent of the unfortunate house of Stuart, he could not accept of any office in the state; he therefore came to London, and employed his talents and learning as an "authour by profession." His writings in history, criticism, and politics, had considerable merit '. He was the first English historian who had recourse to that authentick source of information, the Parliamentary Journals; and such was the power of his political pen, that, at an early period, government thought it worth their while to keep it quiet by a pension, which he enjoyed till his death 5. Johnson esteemed him enough to wish that his life should be written. The debates in Parliament, which were brought home and digested by Guthrie, whose memory, though surpassed by others who have since followed him in the same department, was yet very quick and tenacious, were sent by Cave to Johnson for his revision; and, after some time, when Guth[About this period we find Mr. M. Browne a rie had attained to greater variety of emconstant but feeble contributor to the Magazine.ployment, and the speeches were more and ED.]

[This is a good description of the figure Johnson makes in the earliest portrait of him (if it can be so called) which we have, in the drawing by Loggan, in 1748. See ante, p. 36.-Eɔ.]

3 [French evidently early, as he translated Lobo in 1733, and, though he appears never to have attained ease and fluency in speaking that language, we see by his communication with General Paoli (10th Oct. 1769), and by a letter to a French lady (probably Madame de Boufflers), preserved by Mrs. Piozzi, that he could write it with idiomatic ease. We find that he proposed to translate Father Paul from the Italian, and in his letter to Cave, undated but prior to 1744, he gave an opinion on some Italian production.-ED.]

more enriched by the accession of Johnson's genius, it was resolved that he should do the whole himself, from the scanty notes furnished by persons employed to attend in

4 How much poetry he wrote, I know not; but he informed me that he was the authour of the beautiful little piece, "The Eagle and Robin Redbreast," in the collection of poems entitled "The Union," though it is there said to be written by Archibald Scott, before the year 1600.-Bos

WELL.

5 [See a letter, from Guthrie to the minister, offering his services, and fixing on "the quarterly payments," in Mr. D'Israeli's interesting work, "The Calamities of Authors," p. 5.—ED.]

both houses of Parliament. Sometimes, however, as he himself told me, he had nothing more communicated to him than the names of the several speakers, and the part which they had taken in the debate.

Thus was Johnson employed during some of the best years of his life, as a mere literary labourer" for gain not glory,” solely to obtain an honest support. He however indulged himself in occasional little sallies, which the French so happily express by the term jeux d'esprit, and which will be noticed in their order, in the progress of this work.

There are, in Oldham's imitation, many prosaick verses and bad rhymes, and his poem sets out with a strange inadvertent blunder:

"Tho' much concern'd to leave my dear old
friend,

I must, however, his design commend
Of fixing in the country –

It is plain he was not going to leave his
friend; his friend was going to leave him.
A young lady at once corrected this with
good critical sagacity, to

"Tho' much concern'd to lose my old dear friend."

son:

"Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se, Quâm quod ridiculos homines facit:" which is an exquisite remark on the galling meanness and contempt annexed to poverty. Johnson's imitation is,

But what first displayed his transcendent powers, and "gave the world assurance of the MAN," was his "LONDON, a Poem, in There is one passage in the original betImitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal;" | ter transfused by Oldham than by Johnwhich came out in May this year, and burst forth with a splendour, the rays of which will for ever encircle his name. Boileau had imitated the same satire with great success, applying it to Paris: but an attentive comparison will satisfy every reader, that he is much excelled by the English Juvenal. Oldham had also imitated it, and applied it to London; all which performances concur to prove, that great cities, in every age, and in every country, will furnish similar topicks of satire. Whether Johnson had previously read Oldham's imitation, I do not know; but it is not a little remarkable, that there is scarcely any coincidence found between the two performances, though upon the very same subject. The only instances are, in describing London as the sink of foreign worthlessness:

-the common shore,

"Of all the griefs that harass the distrest, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest." Oldham's, though less elegaut, is more just:

"Nothing in poverty so ill is borne,

As its exposing men to grinning scorn.'

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Where, or in what manner this poem was composed, I am sorry that I neglected to ascertain with precision from Johnson's own authority. He has marked upon his corrected copy of the first edition of it, "Written in 1738;" and, as it was publish

Where France does all her filth and ordure pour." ed in the month of May in that year, it is

OLDHAM.

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JOHNSON.

The particulars which Oldham has colited, both as exhibiting the horrours of London, and of the times contrasted with letter days, are different from those of Johnson, and in general well chosen, and well expressed 2.

[It is hardly fair to compare the poems in Ubtle way: Boileau's was a mere badinage, con plaining of, or laughing at, the personal dan

and inconveniences of Paris. Johnson's obwas to satirise the moral depravity of a great Pay.-ED.]

I own it pleased me to find amongst them ore trait of the manners of the age in London, in the last century, to shield from the sneer of En

evident that much time was not employed in preparing it for the press. The history of its publication I am enabled to give in a very satisfactory manner; and judging from myself, and many of my friends, I trust that it will not be uninteresting to my readers.

We may be certain, though it is not expressly named in the following letters to Mr. Cave, in 1738, that they all relate to

it.

"TO MR. CAVE.

"Castle-street, Wednesday Morning, [March, 1758 3.] "SIR,-When I took the liberty of writing to you a few days ago, I did not ex

glish ridicule, what was some time ago too com-
mon a practice in my native city of Edinburgh!
"If what I've said can't from the town affright,
Consider other dangers of the night;
When brickbats are from upper stories thrown,
And emptied chamberpots come pouring down
From garret windows."-BosWELL.

3 [The editor has ventured, from internal evidence, compared with the respective publications

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