popularity and sunk in shame. For his reputation, which no man can give to nimself, those who conferred it are to answer. Of his public ministry the means of judging were sufficiently attainable. He must be allowed to preach well, whose sermons strike his audience with forcible conviction. Of his life, those who thought it consistent with his doctrine did not originally form false notions. He was at first what he endeavoured to make others; but the world broke down his resolution, and he in time ceased to exemplify his own instruc tions.

"Let those who are tempted to his faults tremble at his punishment; and those whom he impressed from the pulpit with religious sentiments endeavour to confirm them, by considering the regret and self-abhorrence with which he reviewed in prison his deviations from rectitude." 1

1 Johnson was deeply concerned at the failure of the petitions in behalf of Dr. Dodd; and asked me at the time, if the request contained in them was not such an one as ought to have been granted to the prayer of twenty-three thousand subjects: to which I answered, that the subscription of popular petitions was a thing of course, and that, therefore, the difference between twenty and twenty thousand names was inconsiderable. He further censured the clergy very severely, for not interposing in his behalf, and said, "that their inactivity arose from a paltry fear of being reproached with partiality towards one of their own order." But although he assisted in the solicitations for pardon, yet, in his private judgment, he thought Dodd unworthy of it; having been known to say, that had he been the adviser of the king, he should have told him, that, in pardoning Dodd, his justice, in consigning the Perreaus to their sentence would have been called in question.-HAWKINS.

Dr. Dodd was born May 29, 1729, and died June 27, 1777, in the forty-ninth year of his age. He married a Miss Perkins from Durham. Left in sorrow, poverty, and disgrace, reason forsook her, and she died a wretched maniac at Ilford, in Essex, July 14, 1784.NOBLE.

CHAPTER XV.

1777.

Mr. Fitzherbert-Hamilton of Bangour-Bleeding-Hume-Fear of Death-Duties of a Biographer-Stuart Family-Birth-days-Warton's Poems-Keddlestone-Derby-Shaving-Nichols's "De Animâ Medicâ "-Dr. Dodd-Blair-Goldsmith-Monboddo's "Air-bath "Early-rising-Sleep-Water-drinking-Rutty's "Spiritual Diary "—Autobiographers—Imitators of Johnson's Style-Biographia Britannica-Melancholy and Madness-London LifeProfessor of the Law-Employment-Dr. Taylor's Sermons-Actors.

JOHNSON gave us this evening, in his happy discriminative manner, a portrait of the late Mr. Fitzherbert of Derbyshire. "There was," said he, "no sparkle, no brilliancy in Fitzherbert; but I never knew a man who was so generally acceptable. He made everybody quite easy, overpowered nobody by the superiority of his talents, made no man think worse of himself by being his rival, seemed always to listen, did not oblige you to hear much from him, and did not oppose what you said. Everybody liked him ; but he had no friends, as I understand the word, nobody with whom he exchanged intimate thoughts. People were willing to think well of everything about him. A gentleman was making an affecting rant, as many people do, of great feelings about 'his dear son," who was at school near London; how anxious he was lest he might be ill, and what he would give to see him. 'Can't you,' said Fitzherbert, This, to be sure, finished the

'take a post-chaise and go to him?'

affected man, but there was not much in it. However, this circulated as wit for a whole winter, and I believe part of a summer too;

1 Dr. Gisborne, physician to his Majesty's household, has obligingly communicated to me a fuller account of this story than had reached Dr. Johnson. The affected gentleman was the late John Gilbert Cooper, Esq. author of a Life of Socrates, and of some poems in Dodsley's collection. Mr. Fitzherbert found him one morning, apparently, in such violent agitation, on account of the indisposition of his son, as to seem beyond the power of comfort. At length, however, he exclaimed, "I'll write an elegy." Mr. Fitzherbert, being satisfied by this of the sincerity of his emotions, slily said, “Had you not better take a post-chaise, and go and see him?" It was the shrewdness of the insinuation which made the story be circulated.

a proof that he was no very witty man. He was an instance of the truth of the observation, that a man will please more upon the whole by negative qualities than by positive; by never offending, than by giving a great deal of delight. In the first place, men hate more steadily than they love; and if I have said something to hurt a man once, I shall not get the better of this by saying many things to please him."

Tuesday, September 16, Dr. Johnson having mentioned to me the extraordinary size and price of some cattle reared by Dr. Taylor, I rode out with our host, surveyed his farm, and was shown one cow which he had sold for a hundred and twenty guineas, and another for which he had been offered a hundred and thirty. Taylor thus described to me his old schoolfellow and friend, Johnson : "He is a man of a very clear head, great power of words, and a very gay imagination; but there is no disputing with him. He will not hear you, and, having a louder voice than you, must roar you down.”

In the afternoon I tried to get Dr. Johnson to like the Poems of Mr. Hamilton of Bongour, which I had brought with me: I had been much pleased with them at a very early age the impression still remained on my mind; it was confirmed by the opinion of my friend the Hon. Andrew Erskine, himself both a good poet and a good critic, who thought Hamilton as true a poet as ever wrote, and that his not having fame was unaccountable. Johnson, upon repeated occasions, while I was at Ashbourne, talked slightingly of Hamilton. He said there was no power of thinking in his verses, nothing that strikes one, nothing better than what you generally find in magazines; and that the highest praise they deserved was, that they were very well for a gentleman to hand about among his friends. He said the imitation of Ne sit ancillæ tibi amor, &c. was too solemn : he read part of it at the beginning. He read the beautiful pathetic song "Ah, the poor sheperd's mournful fate," and did not seem to give attention to what I had been used to think tender elegant strains, but laughed at the rhyme, in Scotch pronunciation, wishes and blushes, reading wushes and there he stopped. He owned that the epitaph on Lord Newhall was pretty well done. He read the "Inscription in a Summer-house," and a little of the Imitations of Horace's Epistles; but said he found nothing to make him desire t♪

read on. When I urged that there were some good poetical passages in the book, "Where," said he, "will you find so large a collection without some ?" I thought the description of Winter might obtain his approbation :

"See Winter, from the frozen north,

Drives his iron chariot forth!

His grisly hand in icy chains

Fair Tweeda's silver flood constrains," &c.

He asked why an "iron chariot ?" and said "icy chains" was an old image. I was struck with the uncertainty of taste, and somewhat sorry that a poet whom I had long read with fondness was not approved by Dr. Johnson. I comforted myself with thinking that the beauties were too delicate for his robust perceptions. Garrick maintained that he had not a taste for the finest productions of genius but I was sensible, that when he took the trouble to analyse critically, he generally convinced us that he was right.

;

In the evening the Rev. Mr. Seward, of Lichfield, who was passing through Ashburne in his way home, drank tea with us. Johnson described him thus: "Sir, his ambition is to be a fine talker so he goes to Buxton and such places, where he may find companies to listen to him. And, Sir, he is a valetudinarian, one of those who are always mending themselves. I do not know a more disagreeable character than a valetudinarian, who thinks he may do any thing that is for his ease [see p. 220] and indulges himself in the grossest freedoms: Sir, he brings himself to the state of a hog in a sty."

Dr. Taylor's nose happening to bleed, he said it was because he had omitted to have himself blooded four days after a quarter of a year's interval. Dr. Johnson, who was a great dabbler in physic, disapproved much of periodical bleeding. "For," said he, "you accustom yourself to an evacuation which nature cannot perform of herself, and therefore she cannot help you, should you from forgetfulness or any other cause omit it; so you may be suddenly suffocated. You may accustom yourself to other periodical evacuations, because, should you omit them, nature can supply the omission; but nature cannot open a vein to blood you."' "I do not like to

1

1 Nature, however, may supply the evacuation by an hemorrhage.-KEARNEY.

take an emetic," said Taylor, "for fear of breaking some small ves sels." "Poh!" said Johnson, "if you have so many things that will break, you had better break your neck at once, and there's an end on't. You will break no small vessels" (blowing with high derision). I mentioned to Dr. Johnson, that David Hume's persisting in his infidelity when he was dying shocked me much. JOHNSON. "Why should it shock you, Sir? Hume owned he had never read the New Testament with attention. Here then was a man who had been at

no pains to inquire into the truth of religion, and had continually turned his mind the other way. It was not to be expected that the prospect of death would alter his way of thinking, unless God should send an angel to set him right." I said I had reason to believe that the thought of annihilation gave Hume no pain. JOHNSON. "It was not so, Sir. He had a vanity in being thought easy. It is more probable that he should assume an appearance of ease, than that so very improbable a thing should be, as a man not afraid of going (as, in spite of his delusive theory, he cannot be sure but he may go) into an unknown state, and being uneasy at leaving all he knew. And you are to consider, that upon his own principle of annihilation he had no motive to speak the truth." The horror of death, which I had always observed in Dr. Johnson, appeared strong to-night. I ventured to tell him, that I had been, for moments in my life, not afraid of death; therefore I could suppose another man in that state of mind for a considerable space of time. He said, "he never had a moment in which death was not terrible to him. He added, that it had been observed, that scarce any man dies in public but with apparent resolution; from that desire of praise which never quits us. I said, Dr. Dodd seemed to be willing to die, and full of hopes of happiness. "Sir," said he, "Dr. Dodd would have given both his hands and both his legs to have lived. The better a man is, the more afraid is he of death, having a clearer view of infinite purity." He owned, that our being in an unhappy uncertainty as to our salvation was mysterious; and said, "Ah! we must wait till we are in another state of being to have many things explained to us" Even the powerful mind of Johnson seemed foiled by futurity. But I thought that the gloom of uncertainty in solemu religious speculation, being mingled with hope, was yet more cons