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Johnson's language, however, must be allowed to be too masculine for the delicate gentleness of female writing. His ladies, therefore, seem strangely formal, even to ridicule, and are well denominated by the names which he has given them, as Misella, Zozima, Properantia, Rhodoclia.

It has of late been the fashion to compare the style of Addison and Johnson, and to depreciate, I think, very unjustly, the style of Addison as nerveless and feeble, because it has not the strength and energy of that of Johnson. Their prose may be balanced like the poetry of Dryden and Pope. Both are excellent, though in different ways. Addison writes with the ease of a gentleman. His readers fancy that a wise and accomplished companion is talking to them; so that he insinuates his sentiments and taste into their minds by an imperceptible influence. Johnson writes like a teacher. He dictates to his readers as if from an academical chair. They attend with awe and admiration; and his precepts are impressed upon them by his commanding eloquence. Addison's style, like a light wine, pleases everybody from the first. Johnson's, like a liquor of more body, seems too strong at first, but by degrees is highly relished; and such is the melody of his periods, so much do they captivate the ear and seize upon the attention, that there is scarcely any writer, however inconsiderable, who does not aim in some degree at the same species of excellence. But let us not ungratefully undervalue that beautiful style, which has pleasingly conveyed to us much instruction and entertainment. Though comparatively weak, opposed to Johnson's Herculean vigour, let us not call it positively feeble. Let us remember the character of his style, as given by Johnson himself: What he attempted, he performed; he is nerer feeble, and he did not wish to be energetic; he is never rapid, and he never stagnates. His sentences have neither studied amplitude nor affected brevity; his periods, though not diligently rounded, are voluble and easy. Who

1 When Johnson showed me a proof-sheet of the character of Addison, in which he so highly extols his style, I could not help observing, that it had not been his own model, as no two styles could differ more from each other. 'Sir, Addison had his style, and I have mine.' When I ventured to ask him whether the difference did not consist in this, that Addison's style was full of idioms, colloquial phrases, and proverbs, and his own more strictly grammatical, and free from such phraseology and modes of speech as can never be literally translated or understood by foreigners, he allowed the discrimination to be just. Let any one who doubts it, try to translate one of Addison's Spectators into Latin, French, or Italian; and though so easy, familiar, and elegant, to an Englishman, as to give the intellect no trouble, yet he would find the transfusion into another language extremely difficult, if not impossible. But a Rambler, Adventurer, or Idler of Johnson would fall into any classical or European language as

ever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.'1

12

Though the Rambler was not concluded till the year 1752, I shall, under this year, say all that I have to observe upon it. Some of the translations of the mottoes, by himself, are admirably done. He acknowledges to have received 'elegant translations' of many of them from Mr. James Elphinston; and some are very happily translated by a Mr. F. Lewis, of whom I never heard more, except that Johnson thus described him to Mr. Malone: 'Sir, he lived in London, and hung loose upon society." The concluding paper of his Rambler is at once dignified and pathetic. I cannot, however, but wish that he had not ended it with an unnecessary Greek verse, translated also into an English couplet. It is too much like the conceit of those dramatic poets, who used to conclude each act with a rhyme; and the expression in the first line of his couplet, Celestial powers,' though proper in Pagan poetry, is ill suited to Christianity, with 'a conformity' to which he consoles himself. How much better would it have been to have ended with the prose sentence, 'I shall never envy the honours which wit and learning obtain in any other cause, if I can be numbered among the writers who have given ardour to virtue and confidence to truth.'

His friend Dr. Birch, being now engaged in preparing an edition of Ralegh's smaller pieces, Dr. Johnson wrote the following letter to that gentleman :

'TO DR. BIRCIL.

'GOUGH SQUARE, May 12, 1750. 'SIR,-Knowing that you are now preparing to favour the public with a new edition of Ralegh's miscellaneous pieces, I have taken the liberty to send you a manuscript which fell by chance within my notice. I perceive no proofs

easily as if it had been originally conceived in it.— BURNEY.

I shall probably, in another work, maintain the merit of Addison's poetry, which has been very unjustly depreciated.-Boswell.

2 In the Gentleman's Magazine for October 1752, p. 468, he is styled the Rev. Francis Lewis, of Chiswick.' The late Lord Macartney, while he resided at Chiswick, at my request, made some inquiry concerning him at that place, but no intelligence was obtained.

The translations of the mottoes supplied by Mr. Elphinston appeared first in the Edinburgh edition of the Rambler, and in some instances were revised and improved, probably by Johnson, before they were inserted in the London octavo edition. The translations of the mottoes affixed to the first thirty numbers of the Rambler were published from the Edinburgh edition, in the Gentleman's Magazine for September 1750, before the work was collected into volumes.— MALONE.

3 Not in the original edition, in folio.-MALONE.

of forgery in my examination of it; and the owner tells me that, as he has heard, the handwriting is Sir Walter's. If you should find reason to conclude it genuine, it will be a kindness to the owner, a blind person,' to recommend it to the booksellers.-I am, sir, your most humble servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.'

His just abhorrence of Milton's political notions was ever strong. But this did not prevent his warm admiration of Milton's great poetical merit, to which he has done illustrious justice, beyond all who have written upon the subject. And this year he not only wrote a prologue, which was spoken by Mr. Garrick, before the acting of Comus, at Drury Lane Theatre, for the benefit of Milton's grand-daughter, but took a very zealous interest in the success of the charity. On the day preceding the performance he published the following letter in the General Advertiser, addressed to the printer of that paper:

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'SIR,-That a certain degree of reputation is acquired merely by approving the works of genius, and testifying a regard to the memory of authors, is a truth too evident to be denied; and therefore to ensure a participation of fame with a celebrated poet, many, who would perhaps have contributed to starve him when alive, have heaped expensive pageants upon his grave.

'It must, indeed, be confessed that this method of becoming known to posterity with honour is peculiar to the great, or at least to the wealthy; but an opportunity now offers for almost every individual to secure the praise of paying a just regard to the illustrious dead, united with the pleasure of doing good to the living. To assist industrious indigence, struggling with distress and debilitated by age, is a display of virtue, and an acquisition of happiness and honour.

'Whoever, then, would be thought capable of pleasure in reading the works of our incomparable Milton, and not so destitute of gratitude as to refuse to lay out a trifle in rational and elegant entertainment for the benefit of his living remains, for the exercise of their own virtue, the increase of their reputation, and the pleasing consciousness of doing good, should appear at Drury Lane Theatre to-morrow, April 5, when Comus will be performed for the benefit of Mrs. Elizabeth Foster, grand-daughter to the author, and the only surviving branch of his family.

'N.B.-There will be a new prologue on the occasion, written by the author of Irene, and spoken by Mr. Garrick; and, by particular

1 Mrs. Williams is probably the person meant.BOSWELL.

2 Alluding probably to Mr. Auditor Benson. See the Dunciad, b. iv.-MALONE.

3 Mrs. Elizabeth Foster died May 9, 1754.-A. CHAL

MERS.

desire, there will be added to the masque a dramatic satire, called Lethe, in which Mr. Garrick will perform.'

In 1751 we are to consider him as carrying on both his Dictionary and Rambler. But he also wrote 'The Life of Cheynel '[*] in the miscellany called The Student; and the Rev. Dr. Douglas having, with uncommon acuteness, clearly detected a gross forgery and imposition upon the public by William Lauder, a Scotch schoolmaster, who had, with equal impudence and ingenuity, represented Milton as a plagiary from certain modern Latin poets, Johnson, who had been so far imposed upon as to furnish a Preface and Postscript to his work, now dictated a letter for Lauder, addressed to Dr. Douglas, acknowledging his fraud in terms of suitable contrition.1

This extraordinary attempt of Lauder was no sudden effort. He had brooded over it for many years; and to this hour, it is uncertain what his principal motive was, unless it were a vain notion of his superiority, in being able, by whatever means, to deceive mankind. To effect this, he produced certain passages from Grotius, Masenius, and others, which had a faint resemblance to some parts of the Paradise Lost. In these he interpolated some fragments of Hog's Latin translation of that poem, alleging that the mass thus fabricated was the archetype from which Milton copied. These fabrications he published from time to time in the Gentleman's Magazine, and, exulting in his fancied success, he, in 1750, ventured to collect them into a pamphlet, entitled An Essay on Milton's Use and Imitation of the Moderns in his Paradise Lost. To this pamphlet Johnson wrote a Preface, in full persuasion of Lauder's honesty, and a Postscript, recommending in the most persuasive terms a subscription for the relief of a grand-daughter of Milton, of whom he thus speaks :

1 Lest there should be any person, at any future period, absurd enough to suspect that Johnson was a partaker in Lauder's fraud, or had any knowledge of it, when he assisted him with his masterly pen, it is proper here to quote the words of Dr. Douglas, now Bishop of Salisbury, at the time when he detected the imposition: It is to be hoped, nay, it is expected, that the elegant and nervous writer, whose judicious sentiments and inimitable style point out the author of Lauder's Preface and Postscript, will no longer allow one to plume himself with his feathers, who appeareth so little to deserve assistance; an assistance which I am persuaded would never have been communicated, had there been the least suspicion of those facts which I have been the instrument of conveying to the world in these sheets.' Milton no Plagiary, 2d edit. p. 78. And his lordship has been pleased now to authorize me to say, in the strongest manner, that there is no ground whatever for any unfavourable reflection against Dr. Johnson, who expressed the strongest indignation against Lander.-BOSWELL.

Lauder afterwards went to Barbadoes, where he died very miserably about the year 1771.-MALONE.

'It is yet in the power of a great people to reward the poet whose name they boast, and from their alliance to whose genius they claim some kind of superiority to every other nation of the earth; that poet, whose works may possibly be read when every other monument of British greatness shall be obliterated; to reward him, not with pictures or with medals which, if he sees, he sees with contempt, but with tokens of gratitude which he perhaps may even now consider as not unworthy the regard of an immortal spirit.'

Surely this is inconsistent with 'enmity towards Milton,' which Sir John Hawkins imputes to Johnson upon this occasion, adding:

'I could all along observe that Johnson seemed to approve not only of the design, but of the argument; and seemed to exult in a persuasion that the reputation of Milton was likely to suffer by this discovery. That he was not privy to the imposture, I am well persuaded; that he wished well to the argument, may be inferred from the Preface, which indubitably was written by Johnson.'

Is it possible for any man of clear judgment to suppose that Johnson, who so nobly praised the poetical excellence of Milton in a Postscript to this very 'discovery,' as he then supposed it, could at the same time exult in a persuasion that the great poet's reputation was likely to suffer by it? This is an inconsistency of which Johnson was incapable; nor can anything more be fairly inferred from the Preface, than that Johnson, who was alike distinguished for ardent curiosity and love of truth, was pleased with an investigation by which both were gratified. That he was actuated by these motives, and certainly by no unworthy desire to depreciate our great epic poet, is evident from his own words; for, after mentioning the general zeal of men of genius and literature, 'to advance the honour, and distinguish the beauties of Paradise Lost,' he says:

'Among the inquiries to which this ardour of criticism has naturally given occasion, none is more obscure in itself, or more worthy of rational curiosity, than a retrospect of the progress of this mighty genius in the construction of his work; a view of the fabric gradually rising, perhaps from small beginnings till its foundation rests in the centre, and its turrets sparkle in the skies to trace back the structure through all its varieties to the simplicity of its first plan, to find what was first projected, whence the scheme was taken, how it was improved, by what assistance it was executed, and from what stores the materials were collected, whether its founder dug them from the quarries of Nature, or demolished other buildings to embellish his own."

1 'Proposals [written evidently by Johnson] for printing the Adamus Erul of Grotius, with a translation

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Is this the language of one who wished to blast the laurels of Milton?

Though Johnson's circumstances were at this time far from being easy, his humane and charitable disposition was constantly exerting itself. Mrs. Anna Williams, daughter of a very ingenious Welsh physician, and a woman of more than ordinary talents in literature, having come to London in hopes of being cured of a cataract in both her eyes, which afterwards ended in total blindness, was kindly received as a constant visitor at his house while Mrs. Johnson lived; and, after her death, having come under his roof in order to have an operation upon her eyes performed with more comfort to her than in lodgings, she had an apartment from him during the rest of her life, at all times when he had a house.

CHAPTER IX.

1752-1754.

IN 1752 Johnson was almost entirely occupied with his Dictionary. The last paper of his Rambler was published March 2,1 this year; after which there was a cessation for some time of any exertion of his talents as an essayist. But in the same year, Dr. Hawkesworth, who was his warm admirer, and a studious imitator of his style, and then lived in great intimacy with him, began a periodical paper, entitled The Adventurer, in connection with other gentlemen, one of whom was Johnson's much-loved friend Dr. Bathurst; and, without doubt, they received many valuable hints from his conversation, most of his friends having been so assisted in the course of their works.

That there should be a suspension of his literary labours during a part of the year 1752 will not seem strange, when it is considered that, soon after closing his Rambler, he suffered a loss which, there can be no doubt, affected him with the deepest distress. For on the 17th of March O. S. his wife died. Why Sir John Hawkins should unwarrantably take upon him even to suppose that Johnson's fondness for her was dissembled (meaning simulated or assumed), and to assert that if it was not the case, it was a lesson Gent. Mag. 1747, and Notes by Wm. Lauder, A. M.'

vol. xvii. p. 404.-MALONE.

1 Here the author's memory failed him, for, according to the account given in a former page, we should here read March 17; but, in truth, as has been already observed, the Rambler closed on Saturday the fourteenth of March, at which time Mrs. Johnson was near her end, for she died on the following Tuesday, March 17. Had the concluding paper of that work been written on the day of her death, it would have been still more extraordinary than it is, considering the extreme grief

into which the author was plunged by that event.The melancholy cast of that concluding essay is sufficiently accounted for by the situation of Mrs. Johnson at the time it was written; and her death three days afterwards put an end to the paper.-MALONE.

he had learned by rote,' I cannot conceive, unless it proceeded from a want of similar feelings in his own breast. To argue from her being much older than Johnson, or any other circumstances, that he could not really love her, is absurd; for love is not a subject of reasoning, but of feeling, and therefore there are no common principles upon which one can persuade another concerning it. Every man feels for himself, and knows how he is affected by particular qualities in the person he admires, the impressions of which are too minute and delicate to be substantiated in language.

The following very solemn and affecting prayer was found after Dr. Johnson's decease, by his servant, Mr. Francis Barber, who delivered it to my worthy friend, the Rev. Mr. Strahan, Vicar of Islington, who, at my earnest request, has obligingly favoured me with a copy of it, which he and I compared with the original. I present it to the world as an undoubted proof of a circumstance in the character of my illustrious friend, which, though some, whose hard minds I never shall envy, may attack as superstitious, will, I am sure, endear him more to numbers of good men. I have an additional, and that a personal, motive for presenting it, because it sanctions what I myself have always

maintained, and am fond to indulge :

'April 26th, 1752, being after

12 at Night of the 25th.

O Lord! Governor of heaven and earth, in whose hands are embodied and departed spirits, if thou hast ordained the souls of the dead to minister to the living, and appointed my departed wife to have care of me, grant that I may enjoy the good effects of her attention and ministration, whether exercised by appearance, impulses, dreams, or in any other manner agreeable to thy government. Forgive my presumption, enlighten my ignorance; and however meaner agents are employed, grant me the blessed influences of thy Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.'

What actually followed upon this most interesting piece of devotion by Johnson, we are not informed; but I, whom it has pleased God to afflict in a similar manner to that which occa

sioned it, have certain experience of benignant communication by dreams.

That his love for his wife was of the most

ardent kind, and, during the long period of fifty years, was unimpaired by the lapse of time, is evident from various passages in the series of his Prayers and Meditations, published by the Rev. Mr. Strahan, as well as from other memorials, two of which I select, as strongly marking the tenderness and sensibility of his mind :

'March 28, 1753.—I kept this day as the anniversary of my Tetty's death, with prayers and tears in the morning. In the evening I prayed for her conditionally, if it were lawful.'

'April 23, 1753. I know not whether I do not too much indulge the vain longings of affection; but I hope they intenerate my heart, and that when I die like my Tetty, this affection will be acknowledged in a happy interview, and that in the meantime I am incited by it to piety. I will, however, not deviate too much from common and received methods of devotion.'

Her wedding-ring, when she became his wife, was after her death preserved by him, as long as he lived, with an affectionate care, in a little round wooden box, in the inside of which he pasted a slip of paper, thus inscribed by him in fair characters, as follows:

'Ehcu!

Eliz. Johnson, Nupta Jul. 9° 1736, Mortua, eher! Mart. 17° 1752.'

After his death, Mr. Francis Barber, his faithful servant and residuary legatee, offered this memorial of tenderness to Mrs. Lucy Porter, Mrs. Johnson's daughter; but she having declined to accept of it, he had it enamelled as a mourning ring for his old master, and presented it to his wife, Mrs. Barber, who now has it.

The state of mind in which a man must be upon the death of a woman whom he sincerely loves, had been in his contemplation many years before. In his Irene we find the following fervent and tender speech of 'Demetrius,' addressed to his 'Aspasia ':

From those bright regions of eternal day.
Where now thou shin'st amongst thy fellow-saints,
Arrayed in purer light, look down on me!
In pleasing visions and assuasive dreams,
O! soothe my soul, and teach me how to lose thee."

I have, indeed, been told by Mrs. Desmoulins, who before her marriage lived for some time with Mrs. Johnson at Hampstead, that she indulged herself in country air and nice living, at an unsuitable expense, while her husband was drudging in the smoke of London, and that she by no means treated him with that complacency which is the most engaging quality in a wife. But all this is perfectly compatible with his fondness for her, especially when it is remembered that he had a high opinion of her understanding, and that the impressions which her beauty, real or imaginary, had originally had not been effaced, though she herself was made upon his fancy, being continued by habit,

doubtless much altered for the worse. The dreadful shock of separation took place in the night, and he immediately despached a letter to his friend, the Rev. Dr. Taylor, which, as Taylor told me, expressed grief in the strongest manner he had ever read; so that it is much to be regretted it has not been preserved.' The

1 In the Gentleman's Magazine for February 1794 (p. 100), was printed a letter pretending to be that

letter was brought to Dr. Taylor, at his house in the Cloisters, Westminster, about three in the morning; and as it signified an earnest desire to see him, he got up, and went to Johnson as soon as he was dressed, and found him in tears and in extreme agitation. After being a little while together, Johnson requested him to join with him in prayer. He then prayed extempore, as did Dr. Taylor; and thus, by means of that piety which was ever his primary object, his troubled mind was in some degree soothed and composed.

The next day he wrote as follows :

TO THE REVEREND DR. TAYLOR. 6 ' March 18, 1752. 'DEAR SIR,-Let me have your company and instruction. Do not live away from me. My distress is great.

'Pray desire Mrs. Taylor to inform me what mourning I should buy for my mother and Miss Porter, and bring a note in writing with

you.

more painful to him than ever, he might very naturally, after her death, be tenderly disposed to charge himself with slight omissions and offences, the sense of which would give him much uneasiness. Accordingly we find, about a year after her decease, that he thus addressed the Supreme Being :

'O Lord, who givest the grace of repentance, and hearest the prayers of the penitent, grant that by true contrition I may obtain forgiveness of all the sins committed, and of all duties neglected, in my union with the wife whom thou hast taken from me; for the neglect of joint devotion, patient exhortation, and mild instruction.' [Pr. and Med. p. 19.]

The kindness of his heart, notwithstanding the impetuosity of his temper, is well known to his friends; and I cannot trace the smallest foundation for the following dark and uncharitable assertion by Sir John Hawkins:-'The apparition of his departed wife was altogether of the terrific kind, and hardly afforded him a hope that she was in a state of happiness.' 2

'Remember me in your prayers, for vain is That he, in conformity with the opinion of the help of man.—I am, dear sir, etc.,

'SAM. JOHNSON.'

That his sufferings upon the death of his wife were severe, beyond what are commonly endured, I have no doubt, from the information of many who were then about him, to none of whom I give more credit than to Mr. Francis Barber, his faithful negro servant,' who came into his family about a fortnight after the dismal event. These sufferings were aggravated by the melancholy inherent in his constitution; and although he probably was not oftener in the wrong than she was, in the little disagreements which sometimes troubled his married state, during which he owned to me that the gloomy irritability of his existence was

written by Johnson on the death of his wife. But it is merely a transcript of the 41st number of the Idler on the death of a friend. A fictitious date, March 17, 1751, O. S., was added by some person, previously to this paper's being sent to the publisher of that miscellany, to give a colour to this deception.-MALONE.

1 Francis Barber was born in Jamaica, and was brought to England in 1750 by Colonel Bathurst, father of Johnson's very intimate friend Dr. Bathurst. He was sent for some time to the Rev. Mr. Jackson's school at Barton, in Yorkshire. The Colonel by his will left him his freedom, and Dr. Bathurst was willing that he should enter into Johnson's service, in which he continued from 1752 till Johnson's death, with the exception of two intervals; in one of which, upon some difference with his master, he went and served an apothecary in Cheapside, but still visited Dr. Johnson occasionally; in another, he took a fancy to go to Part of the time, indeed, he was, by the kindness of his master, at a school in Northamptonshire, that he might have the advantage of some learning. So early and so lasting a connection was there between Dr. Johnson and this humble friend.-BOSWELL

sea.

many of the most able, learned, and pious Christians in all ages, supposed that there was a middle state after death, previous to the time at which departed souls are finally received to eternal felicity, appears, I think, unquestionably from his devotions. And, O Lord, so far as it may be lawful in me, I commend to thy fatherly goodness the soul of my departed wife; beseeching thee to grant her whatever is best in her present state, and finally to receive her to eternal happiness.' [Pr. and Med. p. 20.] But this state has not been looked upon with horror, but only as less gracious.

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1 See his beautiful and affecting Rambler, No. 54.— MALONE.

2 Hawkins's Life of Johnson, p. 316.

3 It does not appear that Johnson was fully persuaded that there was a middle state: his prayers being only conditional, i.e. if such a state existed.MALONE.

4 A few months before his death, Johnson honoured her memory by the following epitaph, which was inscribed on her tombstone in the church of Bromley :'Hic conduntur reliquiæ ELIZABETHE Antiquâ Jarvisiorum gente,

Peatling, apud Leicestrienses, orta;
Formosa, culta, ingeniosæ, piæ;
Uxoris, primis nuptiis, HENRICI PORTER,
Secundis, SAMUELIS JOHNSON :

Qui multum amatam, diuque defletam
Hoc lapide contexit.

Obiit Londini, Mense Mart.

A.D. MDCCLII.'

-MALONE.

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