Johnson thought the opportunity fair to think of his tragedy of Irene, which was his whole stock on his first arrival in town, in the year 1737. That play was accordingly put into rehearsal in January, 1749. As a precursor to prepare the way, and to awaken the public attention, The Vanity of Human Wishes, a poem in imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal, by the Author of London, was published in the same month. In the Gentleman's Magazine, for February, 1749, we find that the tragedy of Irene was acted at Drury-Lane, on Monday, February the 6th, and from that time, without interruption, to Monday, February, the 20th being in all thirteen nights. Since that time it has not been exhihited on any stage. Irene may be added to some other plays in our language, which have lost their place in the theatre, but continue to please in the closet. During the representation of this piece, Johnson attended every night behind the scenes. Conceiving that his character as an author required some ornament for his person, he chose upon that occasion to decorate himself with a handsome waistcoat, and a gold-laced hat. The late Mr. Topham Beauclerc, who had a great deal of that humour, which pleases the more for seeming undesigned, used to give a pleasant description of this green-room finery, as related by the author himself; "But," said Johnson, with great gravity, "I soon laid aside my gold-laced hat, lest it should make me proud." The amount of the three benefit nights for the tragedy of Irene, it is to be feared, was not very considerable, as the profit, that stimulating motive, never invited the author to another dramatic attempt. Some years afterwards, when the present writer was intimate with Garrick, and knew Johnson to be in distress, he asked the manager why he did not produce another tragedy for his Litchfield friend? Garrick's answer was remarkable: "When Johnson writes tragedy, declamation roars, and passion sleeps: when Shakspeare wrote, he dipped his pen in his own heart." blished a club, consisting of ten in number a Horseman's, in Ivy-Lane, on every Tuesday evening. This is the first scene of social life to which Johnson can be traced out of his own house. The members of this little society were, Samuel Johnson; Dr. Salter (father of the late Master of the Charter-House ;) Dr. Hawkesworth; Mr. Ryland, a merchant; Mr. Payne, a bookseller, in Paternoster-row; Mr. Samuel Dyer, a learned young man; Dr. Wm. M'Ghie, a Scotch physician; Dr. Edmund Barker, a young physician; Dr. Bathurst, another young physi cian; and Sir John Hawkins. This list is given by Sir John, as it should seem, with no other view than to draw a spiteful and malevolent character of almost every one of them. Mr. Dyer, whom Sir John says he loved with the affection of a brother, meets with the harshest treatment, because it was his maxim, that to live in peace with mankind, and in a temper to do good offices, was the most essential part of our duty. That notion of moral goodness gave umbrage to Sir John Hawkins, and drew down upon the memory of his friend the bitterest imputations. Mr. Dyer, however, was admired and loved through life. He was a man of literature. Johnson loved to enter with him into a discussion of metaphysical, moral, and critical subjects; in those conflicts, exercising his talents, and, according to his custom, always contending for victory. Dr. Bathurst was the person on whom Johnson fixed his affection. He hardly ever spoke of him without tears in his eyes. It was from him, who was a native of Jamaica, that Johnson received into his service Frank,* the black servant, whom, on account of his master, he valued to the end of his life. At the time of instituting the club in Ivy-Lane, Johnson had projected the Rambler. The title was most probably suggested by the Wanderer; a poem which he mentions with the warmest praise, in the Life of Savage. With the same spirit of independence with which he wished to live, it was now his pride to write. There may, perhaps, be a degree of sameness He communicated his plan to none of his friends; in this regular way of tracing an author from he desired no assistance, relying entirely on his one work to another, and the reader may feel the own fund, and the protection of the Divine Be effect of a tedious monotony: but in the life of ing, which he implored in a solemn form of Johnson there are no other landmarks. He prayer, composed by himself for the occasion. was now forty years old, and had mixed but lit- Having formed a resolution to undertake a work tle with the world. He followed no profession, that might be of use and honour to his country, transacted no business, and was a stranger to he thought, with Milton, that this was not to be what is called a town life. We are now arrived obtained "but by devout prayer to that Eternal at the brightest period he had hitherto known. Spirit that can enrich with all utterance and His name broke out upon mankind with a de-knowledge, and send out his seraphim with the gree of lustre that promised a triumph over all his hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the difficulties. The Life of Savage was admired as lips of whom he pleases." a beautiful and instructive piece of biography. Having invoked the special protection of HeaThe two imitations of Juvenal were thought to ven, and by that act of piety fortified his mind, rival even the excellence of Pope; and the tra- he began the great work of the Rambler. The gedy of Irene, though uninteresting on the stage, first number was published on Tuesday, March was universally admired in the closet, for the the 20th, 1750; and from that time was continued propriety of the sentiments, the richness of the regularly every Tuesday and Saturday, for the language, and the general harmony of the whole space of two years, when it finally closed, on composition. His fame was widely diffused; Saturday, March 14, 1752. As it began with and he had made his agreement with the book-motives of piety, so it appears that the same relisellers for his English Dictionary at the sum of fifteen hundred guineas; a part of which was to be, from time to time, advanced in proportion to the progress of the work. This was a certain fund for his support, without being obliged to write fugitive pieces for the petty supplies of the day. Accordingly we find that, in 1749, he esta gious spirit glowed with unabating ardour to the last. His conclusion is: "The Essays professedly serious, if I have been able to execute my own intentions, will be found exactly conformable to the precepts of Christianity, without any *See Gent. Mag. vol. Ixxi. p. 190.. accommodation to the licentiousness and levity on Milton's Use and Imitation of the Moderns, of the present age. I therefore look back on in his Paradise Lost; dedicated to the Universithis part of my work with pleasure, which no ties of Oxford and Cambridge." While the man shall diminish or augment. I shall never book was in the press, the proof-sheets were envy the honours which wit and learning obtain shown to Johnson at the Ivy-Lane club, by in any other cause, if I can be numbered among Payne, the bookseller, who was one of the memthe writers who have given ardour to virtue, and bers. No man in that Society was in possesconfidence to truth." The whole number of Es- sion of the authors from whom Lauder professed says amounted to two hundred and eight. Ad- to make his extracts. The charge was believed, dison's, in the Spectator, are more in number, and the contriver of it found his way to Johnson; but not half in point of quantity: Addison was who is represented by Sir John Hawkins, not not bound to publish on stated days; he could indeed as an accomplice in the fraud, but through watch the ebb and flow of his genius, and send motives of malignity to Milton, delighting in the his paper to the press when his own taste was detection, and exulting that the poet's reputation satisfied. Johnson's case was very different. would suffer by the discovery. More malice to He wrote singly and alone. In the whole pro- a deceased friend cannot well be imagined. gress of the work he did not receive more than Hawkins adds, "that he wished well to the arten essays. This was a scanty contribution. gument must be inferred from the preface, which For the rest, the author has described his situa-indubitably was written by him." The preface, tion. "He that condemns himself to compose it is well known, was written by Johnson, and on a stated day, will often bring to his task an attention dissipated, a memory embarrassed, an imagination overwhelmed, a mind distracted with anxieties, a body languishing with disease: he will labour on a barren topic, till it is too late to change it; or, in the ardour of invention, diffuse his thoughts into wild exuberance, which the pressing hour of publication cannot suffer judgment to examine or reduce." Of this excel-progress of this mighty genius in the construclent production, the number sold on each day did not amount to five hundred: of course the bookseller, who paid the author four guineas a week, did not carry on a successful trade. His generosity and perseverance deserve to be commended; and happily, when the collection appeared in volumes, were amply rewarded. Johnson lived to see his labours flourish in a tenth edition. His posterity, as an ingenious French writer has said on a similar occasion, began in his lifetime. for that reason is inserted in this edition. But if Johnson approved of the argument, it was no longer than while he believed it founded in truth. Let us advert to his own words in that very preface. "Among the inquiries to which the ardour of criticism has naturally given occasion, none is more obscure in itself, or more worthy of rational curiosity, than a retrospection of the tion 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 the first plan; to find what was 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 In the beginning of 1750, soon after the Ram- own." These were the motives that induced bler was set on foot, Johnson was induced by the Johnson to assist Lauder with a preface: and arts of a vile impostor to lend his assistance, are not these the motives of a critic and a scho during a temporary delusion, to a fraud not to lar? What reader of taste, what man of real be paralleled in the annals of literature. One knowledge, would not think his time well emLauder, a native of Scotland, who had been a ployed in an inquiry so curious, so interesting, teacher in the University of Edinburgh, had con- and instructive? If Lauder's facts were really ceived a mortal antipathy to the name and cha- true, who would not be glad, without the smallracter of Milton. His reason was, because the est tincture of malevolence, to receive real inprayer of Pamela, in Sir Philip Sidney's Arca- formation? It is painful to be thus obliged to dia, was, as he supposed, maliciously inserted vindicate a man who, in his heart, towered above by the great poet in an edition of the Eikon the petty arts of fraud and imposition, against an Basilike, in order to fix an imputation of impiety injudicious biographer, who undertook to be his on the memory of the murdered king. Fired editor, and the protector of his memory. Anowith resentment, and willing to reap the profits ther writer, Dr. Towers, in an Essay on the Life of a gross imposition, this man collected from and Character of Dr. Johnson, seems to counteseveral Latin poets, such as Masenius the Je-nance this calumny. He says, "It can hardly suit, Staphorstius a Dutch divine, Beza, and be doubted, but that Johnson's aversion to Milothers, all such passages as bore any kind of ton's politics was the cause of that alacrity with resemblance to different places in the Paradise which he joined with Lauder in his infamous atLost; and these he published from time to time, tack on our great epic poet, and which induced in the Gentleman's Magazine, with occasional him to assist in that transaction." These words interpolations of lines, which he himself trans- would seem to describe an accomplice, were they lated from Milton. The public credulity swal-not immediately followed by an express declaralowed all with eagerness; and Milton was supposed to be guilty of plagiarism from inferior modern writers. The fraud succeeded so well, that Lauder collected the whole into a volume, and advertised it under the title of "An Essay · *It has since been paralleled, in the case of the Shakspeare MSS. by a yet more vile impostor. tion, that Johnson was unacquainted with the imposture. Dr. Towers adds, "It seems to have been by way of making some compensation to the memory of Milton, for the share he had in the attack of Lauder, that Johnson wrote the Prologue, spoken by Garrick, at Drury-Lane Theatre, 1750, on the performance of the Masque of Comus, for the benefit of Milton's grand daughter." Dr. Towers is not free from proju- of his guilt, than to stand forth the convicted dice; but, as Shakspeare has it, "he begets a champion of a lie; and for this purpose he drew temperance, to give it smoothness." He is, up, in the strongest terms, a recantation, in a therefore, entitled to a dispassionate answer. Letter to the Rev. Mr. Douglass, which Lauder When Johnson wrote the prologue, it does not signed, and published in the year 1751. That appear that he was aware of the malignant ar- piece will remain a lasting memorial of the abtifices practised by Lauder. In the postscript horrence with which Johnson beheld a violation to Johnson's preface, a subscription is proposed, of truth. Mr. Nichols, whose attachment, to for relieving the grand-daughter of the author his illustrious friend was unwearied, showed of Paradise Lost. Dr. Towers will agree that him, in 1780, a book called "Remarks on Johnthis shows Johnson's alacrity in doing good. son's Life of Milton," in which the affair of That alacrity showed itself again in the letter Lauder was renewed with virulence, and a poprinted in the European Magazine, January, etical scale in the Literary Magazine, 1758, (when 1785, and there said to have appeared originally Johnson had ceased to write in that collection) in the General Advertiser, 4th April, 1750, by was urged as an additional proof of deliberate which the public were invited to embrace the malice. He read the libellous passage with atopportunity of paying a just regard to the illus- tention, and instantly wrote on the margin: "In trious dead, united with the pleasure of doing the business of Lauder I was deceived, partly by good to the living. The letter adds, "to assist thinking the man too frantic to be fraudulent. industrious indigence, struggling with distress, Of the poetical scale quoted from the Magazine I and debilitated by age, is a display of virtue, and am not the author. I fancy it was put in after I an acquisition of happiness and honour. Who- had quitted that work; for I not only did not ever, therefore, would be thought capable of write it, but I do not remember it." As a critic pleasure in reading the works of our incompara- and a scholar, Johnson was willing to receive ble Milton, and not so destitute of gratitude as what numbers, at the time, believed to be true to refuse to lay out a trifle, in a rational and ele-information: when he found that the whole gant entertainment, for the benefit of his living was a forgery, he renounced all connexion with remains, for the exercise of their own virtue, the the author. increase of their reputation, and the consciousness of doing good, should appear at DruryLane 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. Nota bene, there will be a new prologue on the occasion, written by the author of Irene, and spoken by Mr. Garrick." The man who had thus exerted himself to serve the grand-daughter, cannot be supposed to have entertained personal malice to the grand-father. It is true, that the malevolence of Lauder, as well as the impostures of Archibald Bower, were fully detected by the labours, in the cause of truth, of the Rev. Dr. Douglas, the late Lord Bishop of Salisbury. "Diram qui contudat Hydram, But the pamphlet, entitled, "Milton vindicated In March 1752, he felt a severe stroke of affliction in the death of his wife. The last num ber of the Rambler, as already mentioned, was on the 14th of that month. The loss of Mrs. Johnson was then approaching, and probably was the cause that put an end to those admirable periodical essays. It appears that she died on the 28th of March: in a memorandum, at the foot of the Prayers and Meditations, that is called her Dying Day. She was buried at Bromley, under the care of Dr. Hawkesworth. Johnson placed a Latin inscription on her tomb, in which he celebrated her beauty. With the singularity of his prayers for his deceased wife, from that time to the end of his days, the world is sufficiently acquainted. On Easter-day, 22d April, 1764, his memorandum says: "Thought on Tetty, poor dear Tetty; with my eyes full. Went to church. After sermon I recommended Tetty in a prayer by herself; and my father, mother, brother, and Bathurst, in another. Í did it only once, so far as it might be lawful for me." In a prayer, January 23, 1759, the day on which his mother was buried, he commends, as far as may be lawful, her soul to God, imploring for her whatever is most beneficial to her in her present state. In this habit he persevered to the end of his days. The Rev. Mr. Strahan, the editor of the Prayers and Meditations, observes, "That Johnson, on some occasions, prays that the Almighty may have had mercy on his wife and Mr. Thrale; evidently supposing their sentence to have been already passed in the Divine Mind; and by consequence, proving, that he had no belief in a state of purgatory, and no reason for praying for the dead that could impeach the sincerity of his profession as a Protestant." Mr. Strahan adds, "That, in praying for the regretted tenants of the grave, Johnson conformed to a practice which has been retained by many learned members of the Established Church, though the Liturgy no longer admits it. If where the tree falleth, there it shall be; if our state, at the close of life, is to be the measure of | her life. our final sentence, then prayers for the dead, be- pease melancholy reflections, Johnson took her ing visibly fruitless, can be regarded only as the home to his house in Gough-square. In 1755, vain oblations of superstition. But of all super- Garrick gave her a benefit-play, which produced stitions this, perhaps, is one of the least unamia- two hundred pounds. In 1766, she published, ble, and most incident to a good mind. If our by subscription, a quarto volume of Miscella sensations of kindness be intense, those, whom nies, and increased her little stock to three hunwe have revered and loved, death cannot wholly dred pounds. That fund, with Johnson's proseclude from our concern. It is true, for the rea-tection, supported her through the remainder of son just mentioned, such evidences of our surviving affection may be thought ill-judged; but surely they are generous, and some natural tenderness is due even to a superstition, which thus originates in piety and benevolence." These sentences, extracted from the Rev. Mr. Strahan's preface, if they are not a full justification, are, at least, a beautiful apology. It will not be improper to add what Johnson himself has said on the subject. Being asked by Mr. Boswell,* what he thought of purgatory as believed by the Roman Catholics? His answer was, "It is a very harmless doctrine. They are of opinion, that the generality of mankind are neither so obstinately wicked as to deserve everlasting punishment; nor so good as to merit being admitted into the society of blessed spirits; and, therefore, that God is graciously pleased to allow a middle state, where they may be purified by certain degrees of suffering. You see there is nothing unreasonable in this; and if it be once established that there are souls in purgatory, it is as proper to pray for them, as for our brethren of mankind who are yet in this life." This was Dr. Johnson's guess into futurity; and to guess is the utmost that man can do. "Shadows, clouds, and darkness, rest upon it." Mrs. Johnson left a daughter, Lucy Porter, by her first husband. She had contracted a friendship with Mrs. Anne Williams, the daughter of Zachary Williams, a physician of eminence in South Wales, who had devoted more than thirty years of a long life to the study of the longitude, and was thought to have made great advances towards that important discovery: His letters to Lord Halifax, and the Lords of the Admiralty, partly corrected and partly written by Dr. Johnson, are still extant in the hands of Mr. Nichols. We there find Dr. Williams, in the eighty-third year of his age, stating, that he had prepared an instrument, which might be called an epitome or miniature of the terraqueous globe, showing, with the assistance of tables constructed by himself, the variations of the magnetic needle, and ascertaining the longitude for the safety of navigation. It appears that this scheme had been referred to Sir Isaac Newton; but that great philosopher excusing himself on account of his advanced age, all applications were useless till 1751, when the subject was re During the two years in which the Rambler was carried on, the Dictionary proceeded by slow degrees. In May 1752, having composed a prayer preparatory to his return from tears and sorrow to the duties of life, he resumed his grand design, and went on with vigour, giving, however, occasional assistance to his friend Dr. Hawkesworth in the Adventurer, which began soon after the Rambler was laid aside. Some of the most valuable essays in _that_collection were from the pen of Johnson. The Dictionary was completed towards the end of 1754; and, Cave being then no more, it was a mortification to the author of that noble addition to our language, that his old friend did not live to see the triumph of his labours. In May 1755, that great work was published. Johnson was desirous that it should come from one who had obtained academical honours; and for that pur pose his friend, the Rev. Thomas Wharton, ob tained for him, in the preceding month of February, a diploma for a master's degree from the University of Oxford. Garrick, on the publication of the Dictionary, wrote the following lines; toil, That one English soldier can beat ten of France, ours It is, perhaps, needless to mention, that Forty was the number of the French academy, at the time when their Dictionary was published to settle their language. In the course of the winter preceding this grand publication, the late Earl of Chesterfield gave two essays in the periodical paper called The World, dated November 28, and December 5, 1754, to prepare the public for so important a Lordship in the year 1747, is there mentioned in work. The original plan, addressed to his ferred, by order of Lord Anson, to Dr. Bradley, the celebrated professor of astronomy. His report was unfavourable, though it allows that a terms of the highest praise; and this was underconsiderable progress had been made. Dr. stood, at the time, to be a courtly way of soliWilliams, after all his labour and expense, died citing a dedication of the Dictionary to himself. in a short time after, a melancholy instance of Johnson treated this civility with disdain. He unrewarded merit. His daughter possessed unsaid to Garrick and others, "I have sailed a common talents, and, though blind, had an ala- long and painful voyage round the world of the crity of mind that made her conversation agree-cock-boats to tow me into harbour?" He had English language, and does he now send out two able, and even desirable. To relieve and ap- said, in the last number of the Rambler, that 'having laboured to maintain the dignity of virtue, I will not now degrade it by the meanness of dedication." Such a man, when he had *Life of Johnson, vol. i. p. 328. 4to edition. finished his Dictionary, "not," as he says himself, "in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academic bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow, and without the patronage of the Great," was not likely to be caught by the lure thrown out by Lord Chesterfield. He had in vain sought the patronage of that nobleman; and his pride, exasperated by disappointment, drew from him the following letter, dated in the month of February, 1755. "To the Right Hon. the Earl of CHESTERFIELD. "MY LORD, "I have been lately informed, by the proprietors of The World, that two papers, in which my Dictionary is recommended to the public, were written by your Lordship. To be so distinguished, is an honour which, being very little accustomed to favours from the great, I know not well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge. It is said, upon good authority, that Johnson once received from Lord Chesterfield the summ of ten pounds. It were to be wished that the secret had never transpired. It was mean to receive it, and meaner to give it. It may be imagined, that for Johnson's ferocity, as it has been called, there was some foundation in his finances; and, as his Dictionary was brought to a conclusion, that money was now to flow in upon him. The reverse was the case. For his subsistence, during the progress of the work, he had received at different times the amount of his contract; and when his receipts were produced to him at a tavern dinner, given by the booksellers, it appeared that he had been paid a hundred pounds and upwards more than his due. The author of a book, called Lexiphanes* written by a Mr. Campbell, a Scotchman, and purser of a man of war, endeavoured to blast his laurels, but in vain. The world applauded, and Johnson never replied. "Abuse," he said, "is often o of service there is nothing so dangerous to an When, upon some slight encouragement, I author as silence; his name, like a shuttlecock, first visited your Lordship, I was overpowered, must be beat backward and forward, or it falls like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of to the ground." Lexiphanes professed to be an your address, and could not forbear to wish, imitation of the pleasant manner of Lucian; but that I might boast myself le vainqueur du vain-humour was not the talent of the writer of Lexiqueur de la terre; that I might obtain that regard phanes. As Dryden says, "He had too much for which I saw the world contending. But I horse-play in his raillery." found my attendance so little encouraged, that It was in the summer of 1754, that the preneither pride nor modesty would suffer me to sent writer became acquainted with Dr. Johncontinue it. When I had once addressed your son. The cause of his first visit is related by Lordship in public, I had exhausted all the art Mrs. Piozzi nearly in the following manner: of pleasing, which a retired and uncourtly scho- "Mr. Murphy being engaged in a periodical lar can possess. I had done all that I could; paper, the Gray's-Inn Journal, was at a friend's and no man is well pleased to have his all ne-house in the country, and not being disposed to glected, be it ever so little. 66 "Seven years, my Lord, have now passed since I waited in your outward room, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication, without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron before. lose pleasure for business, wished to content his bookseller by some unstudied essay. He therefore took up a French Journal Littéraire, and translating something he liked, sent it away to town. Time, however discovered that he translated from the French a Rambler, which had been taken from the English without acknowledgment. Upon this discovery, Mr. Murphy thought it right to make his excuses to Dr. Johnson. He went next day, and found him covered with soot, like a chimney-sweeper, in a little room, as if he had been acting Lungs in the Alchymist, making ather. This being told by Mr. Murphy in company, Come, come,' said Dr. Johnson, 'the story is black enough; but it was a happy day that brought you first to my house."" After this first visit, the author of this narrative by degrees grew intimate with Dr. Johnson. The first striking sentence, that he heard from him, was in a few days after the publication of Lord Bolingbroke's posthumous works. Mr. Garrick asked him, "If he had seen them?" "Yes, I have seen them." "What do you think of them?" "Think of them!" He made a long pause, and then replied: "Think of them! A scoundrel and a coward! A scoun"Having carried on my work thus far with drel, who spent his life in charging a gun against so little obligation to any favourer of learning, I Christianity; and a coward, who was afraid of shall not be disappointed, though I should con-hearing the report of his own gun; but left halfclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long wakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with so much exultation, "The Shepherd in Virgil grew acquainted with Love, and found him a native of the rocks. "Is not a patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind: but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received; or to be unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a patron, which Providence has enabled me to do for myself. My Lord, your Lordship's most humble, a-crown to a hungry Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death." His mind, at this time strained and over-laboured by constant exertion, *This work was not published until the year 1767, when Dr. Johnson's Dictionary was fully established in reputation. C. |