memorials of his good will towards me, having induced me to bind them in a parcel containing other select papers, and labelled with the titles appertaining to them. They consist but of three letters, which I believe were all that I ever received from Dr. Johnson. Of these, one, which was written in quadruplicate, under the different dates of its respective despatches, has already been made public, but not from any communication of mine. This, however, I have joined to the rest; and have now the pleasure of sending them to you, for the use to which you informed me it was your desire to destine them.

66

My promise was pledged with the condition, that if the letters were found to contain any thing which should render them improper for the public eye, you would dispense with the performance of it. You will have the goodness, I am sure, to pardon my recalling this stipulation to your recollection, as I shall be loth to appear negligent of that obligation which is always implied in an epistolary confidence. In the reservation of that right I have read them over with the most scrupulous attention, but have not seen in them the slightest cause on that ground to withhold them from you. But, though not on that, yet on another ground, I own I feel a little, yet but a little, reluctance to part with them: I mean on that of my own credit, which I fear will suffer by the information conveyed by them, that I was early in the possession of such valuable instructions for the beneficial employment of the influence of my late station, and (as it may seem) have so little availed myself of them. Whether I could, if it were necessary, defend myself against such an imputation, it little concerns the world to know. I look only to the effect which these relics may produce, considered as evidences of the virtues of their author; and believing that they will be found to display an uncommon warmth of private friendship, and a mind ever attentive to the improvement and extension of useful knowledge, and solicitous for the interests of mankind, I can cheerfully submit to the little sacrifice of my own fame, to contribute to the illus tration of so great and venerable a character. They cannot be better applied, for that end, than by being intrusted to your hands. Allow me, with this offering, to infer from it a proof of the very great esteem with which I have the honour to profess myself, Sir, your, &c., WARREN HASTINGS.

"P. S. At some future time, and when you have no further occasion for these papers, I shall be obliged to you if you will return them."

The last of the three letters thus graciously put into my hands, and which has already appeared in public, belongs to this year; but I shall previously insert the first two in the order of their dates. They altogether form a grand group in my biographical picture.

since I was honoured by your visit, I had too much pleasure from it to forget it. By those whom we delight to remember, we are unwilling to be forgotten; and therefore I cannot omit this oppor tunity of reviving myself in your memory by a letter which you will receive from the hands of my friend Mr. Chambers; a man whose purity of manners and vigour of mind are sufficient to make every thing welcome that he brings.

"That this is my only reason for writing will be too apparent by the uselessness of my letter to any other purpose. I have no questions to ask; not that I want curiosity after either the ancient or present state of regions in which have been seen all the power and splendour of wide-extended empire; and which, as by some grant of natural superiority, supply the rest of the world with almost all that pride desires and luxury enjoys But my knowledge of them is too scanty to furnish me with proper topics of inquiry: I can only wish for information; and hope that a mind comprehensive like yours will find leisure, amidst the cares of your important station, to inquire into many subjects of which the European world either thinks not at all, or thinks with deficient intelligence and uncertain conjecture. I shall hope that he who once intended to increase the learning of his country by the introduction of the Persian language will examine nicely the traditions and histories of the East; that he will survey the wonders of its ancient edifices and trace the vestiges of its ruined cities; and that, at his return, we shall know the arts and opinions of a race of men from whom very little has been hitherto derived.

You, Sir, have no need of being told by me how much may be added by your attention and patronage to experimental knowledge and natural history. There are arts of manufacture practised in the countries in which you preside, which are yet very imperfectly known here, either to artificers or philosophers. Of the natural productions, animate and inanimate, we yet have so little intelligence, that our books are filled, I fear, with conjectures about things which an Indian peasant knows by his senses.

"Many of those things my first wish is to see; my second, to know, by such accounts as a man like you will be able to give.

"As I have not skill to ask proper questions, I have likewise no such access to great men as tion. Of the agitations of an unsettled governcan enable me to send you any political informa ment, and the struggles of a feeble ministry, care is doubtless taken to give you more exact accounts than I can obtain. If you are inclined to interest yourself much in public transactions, it is no misfortune to you to be distant from them.

that your favourite language is not neglected, will That literature is not totally forsaking us, and

appear from the book, which I should have pleased myself more with sending, if I could have presented it bound: but time was wanting. I beg, however, Sir, that you will accept it from a man very desirous of your regard; and that if you think me able to gratify you by any thing more important, you will employ me.

2 Jones's" Persian Grammar."

"I am now going to take leave, perhaps a very long leave, of my dear Mr. Chambers. That he is going to live where you govern may justly alleviate the regret of parting; and the hope of seeing both him and you again, which I am not willing to mingle with doubt, must at present comfort as it can, Sir, your, &c., SAM. JOHNSON."

JOHNSON TO HASTINGS.

"London, Dec. 20. 1774. "SIR, Being informed that by the departure of a ship there is now an opportunity of writing to Bengal, I am unwilling to slip out of your memory by my own negligence, and therefore take the liberty of reminding you of my existence by sending you a book which is not yet made public.

"I have lately visited a region less remote and less illustrious than India, which afforded some occasions for speculation. What has occurred to me, I have put into the volume', of which I beg

your acceptance.

"Men in your station seldom have presents totally disinterested: my book is received, let me now make my request. There is, Sir, somewhere within your government, a young adventurer, one Chauncey Lawrence, whose father is one of my oldest friends. Be pleased to show the young man what countenance is fit; whether he wants to be restrained by your authority, or encouraged by your favour. His father is now president of the college of physicians; a man venerable for his knowledge, and more venerable for his virtue.

"I wish you a prosperous government, a safe return, and a long enjoyment of plenty and tranquillity. I am, Sir, your, &c.,

"SAM. JOHNSON."

JOHNSON TO HASTINGS.

"Jan. 9. 1781.

“SIR,― Amidst the importance and multiplicity of affairs in which your great office engages you, I take the liberty of recalling your attention for a moment to literature, and will not prolong the interruption by an apology which your character

makes needless.

"Mr. Hoole, a gentleman long known and long esteemed in the India House, after having translated Tasso, has undertaken Ariosto. How well he is qualified for his undertaking he has already shown. He is desirous, Sir, of your favour in promoting his proposals, and flatters me by supposing that my testimony may advance his interest.

"It is a new thing for a clerk of the India House to translate poets; it is new for a governor of Bengal to patronise learning. That he may find his ingenuity rewarded, and that learning may flourish under your protection, is the wish of, Sir, your, &c.,

SAM. JOHNSON."

JOHNSON TO BOSWELL.

-

"March 14. 1781.

"DEAR SIR, I hoped you had got rid of all this hypocrisy of misery. What have you to do with Liberty and Necessity? Or what more than to hold your tongue about it? Do not doubt but I shall be most heartily glad to see you here again, for I love every part about you but your affectation of distress.

"I have at last finished my Lives, and have laid up for you a load of copy, all out of order, so that it will amuse you a long time to set it right. Come to me, my dear Bozzy, and let us be as happy as we can. We will go again to the Mitre, and talk old times over. I am, dear Sir, yours affectionately,

SAM. JOHNSON."

On Monday, March 19., I arrived in London, and on Tuesday, the 20th, met him in Fleet Street, walking, or rather indeed moving along; for his peculiar march is thus described in a Life of him published very soon after his very just and picturesque manner, in a short death:-"When he walked the streets, what with the constant roll of his head, and the concomitant motion of his body, he appeared to make his way by that motion, independent of his feet." That he was often much stared at while he advanced in this manner may easily be believed; but it was not safe to make sport of one so robust as he was. Mr. Langton saw him one day, in a fit of absence, by a sudden start, drive the load off a porter's back, and walk forward briskly, without being conscious of what he had done. The porter was very angry, but stood still, and eyed the huge figure with much earnestness, till he was satisfied that his wisest course was to be quiet, and take up his burthen again.

Our accidental meeting in the street after a long separation was a pleasing surprise to us both. He stepped aside with me into Falcon Court, and made kind inquiries about my and as we were in a hurry, going family; different ways, I promised to call on him next day. He said he was engaged to go out in the morning. "Early, Sir?" said I. JOHNSON. Why, Sir, a London morning does not go with the sun."

66

I waited on him next evening, and he gave me a great portion of his original manuscript of his "Lives of the Poets," which he had preserved for me.

I found on visiting his friend, Mr. Thrale, that he was now very ill, and had removed, I suppose by the solicitation of Mrs. Thrale, to a house in Grosvenor Square. I was sorry to see him sadly changed in his appearance.

He told me I might now have the pleasure to see Dr. Johnson drink wine again, for he had lately returned to it. When I mentioned this to Johnson, he said, "I drink it now some

"From his cradle

He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one:
And, to add greater honours to his age
Than man could give him, he died fearing Heaven.
SHAKSPEARE.

times, but not socially." The first evening that I was with him at Thrale's, I observed he poured a large quantity of it into a glass, and swallowed it greedily. Every thing about his character and manners was forcible and violent; there never was any moderation. Many a day did he fast, many a year did he refrain from wine: but when he did eat, it was voraciously; when he did drink wine, it was copiously. He could practise abstinence, but not temperance.

Mrs. Thrale and I had a dispute whether Shakspeare or Milton had drawn the most admirable picture of a man.' I was for Shakspeare, Mrs. Thrale for Milton; and, after a fair hearing, Johnson decided for my opinion. I told him of one of Mr. Burke's playful sallies upon Dean Marlay 2: "I don't like the Deanery of Ferns; it sounds so like a barren title." "Dr. Heath 3 should have it," said I. Johnson laughed, and, condescending to trifle in the same mode of conceit, suggested Dr. Moss.1

He said, "Mrs. Montagu has dropt me.5 Now, Sir, there are people whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropt by." He certainly was vain of the society of ladies, and could make himself very agreeable to them when he chose it: Sir Joshua Reynolds agreed with me that he could. Mr. Gibbon, with his usual sneer, controverted it, perhaps in resentment of Johnson's having talked with some disgust of his ugliness, which one would think a philosopher would not mind. Dean Marlay wittily observed, "A lady may be vain when she can turn a wolf-dog into a lap-dog."

The election for Ayrshire, my own county, was this spring tried upon a petition before a committee of the House of Commons. I was one of the counsel for the sitting member 6, and took the liberty of previously stating different points to Johnson, who never failed to see them clearly, and to supply me with some good hints Ile dictated to me the following note upon the registration of deeds :

1 Shakspeare makes Hamlet thus describe his father:
"See what a grace was seated on his brow;
Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself,
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;
A station like the herald, Mercury,
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill;
A combination and a form, indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his seal,
To give the world assurance of a man."
Milton thus portrays our first parent, Adam:
"His fair large front and eye sublime declared
Absolute rule; and hyacinthin locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung
Clust'ring, but not beneath his shoulders broad."-
BOSWELL.

The latter part of this description, "but not beneath," &c., may very probably be ascribed to Milton's prejudices in favour of the puritans, who had a great aversion to long hair. - MALONE. It is strange that the picture drawn by the unlearned Shakspeare should be full of classical images, and that by the learned Milton void of them. Milton's description appears to be more picturesque - KEARNEY. Dr. Kearney seems to have forgotten that Milton is here a mere descriptive poet, giving a kind of abstract delineation of the

"All laws are made for the convenience of the

community. What is legally done should be legally recorded, that the state of things may be known, and that wherever evidence is requisite, evidence may be had. For this reason, the obligation to frame and establish a legal register is enforced by a legai penalty, which penalty is the want of that perfection and plenitude of right which a register would give. Thence it follows that this is not an objection merely legal; for the reason on which the law stands being equitable, makes it an equitable objection."

'This," said he, "you must enlarge on, when speaking to the committee. You must not argue there as if you were arguing in the schools; close reasoning will not fix their attention: you must say the same thing over and over again in different words. If you say it but once, they miss it in a moment of inattention. It is unjust, Sir, to censure lawyers for multiplying words when they argue; it is often necessary for them to multiply words."

His notion of the duty of a member of parliament, sitting upon an election-committee, was very high; and when he was told of a gentleman upon one of those committees, who read the newspapers part of the time, and slept the rest, while the merits of a vote were examined by the counsel; and as an excuse, when challenged by the chairman for such behaviour, bluntly answered, “I had made up my mind upon that case;" Johnson, with an indignant contempt, said, "If he was such a rogue as to make up his mind upon a case without hearing it, he should not have been such a fool as to tell it." "I think," said Mr. Dudley Long, now North, "the Doctor has pretty plainly made him out to be both rogue and fool."

Johnson's profound reverence for the hierarchy made him expect from bishops the highest degree of decorum; he was offended even at their going to taverns: "A bishop," said be, "has nothing to do at a tippling-house. It is not indeed immoral in him to go to a tavern; neither would it be immoral in him to whip a

first man, while Shakespeare is a dramatist, speaking in the character of an enthusiastic youth, fresh from his studies, and boiling with indignation and grief, which he endeavours to controul, or moderate, by these classical and, what in any other case would be, pedantic allusions.- CROKER

He

2 Dr. Richard Marlay, afterwards Lord Bishop of Waterford; a very amiable, benevolent, and ingenious man. was chosen a member of the Literary Club in 1777, and died in Dublin, July 2. 1802, in his seventy-fifth year.- MALONE. In very early life, I had the honour of the bishop's acquaintance and indulgent notice of my first attempts in literature. He was all that Mr. Malone says of him. CROKER

3 Dr. Benjamin Heath, celebrated for a curious library, which was sold in 1810, at very high prices. — CROKER.

Dr. Charles Moss had been already better provided for, having been, in 1766, Bishop of St. David's, and in 1774, 0f Bath and Wells. He died in 1802. - CROKER.

5 Mrs. Montagu, with, I think, an over nicety of feeling t that was the real cause) 'dropt' him on account of his Lite of Lord Lyttelton. See antè, p. 675. — CROKER.

6 Hugh Montgomery, Esq. The petitioner, however, WBliam Macdowall, Esq., was declared duly elected. - CROKER 7 This ingenious and pleasant gentleman died in 183 at the age of eighty, after an illness which had for some years secluded him from society. - CROKER.

top in Grosvenor Square: but, if he did, I hope the boys would fall upon him, and apply the whip to him. There are gradations in conduct; there is morality, decency, propriety. None of these should be violated by a bishop. A bishop should not go to a house where he may meet a young fellow leading out a wench." BOSWELL. "But, Sir, every tavern does not admit women." JOHNSON. "Depend upon it, Sir, any tavern will admit a welldressed man and a well-dressed woman they will not perhaps admit a woman whom they see every night walking by their door, in the street. But a well-dressed man may lead in a well-dressed woman to any tavern in London. Taverns sell meat and drink, and will sell them to any body who can eat and can drink. You may as well say that a mercer will not sell silks to a woman of the town."

He also disapproved of bishops going to routs; at least of their staying at them longer than their presence commanded respect. He mentioned a particular bishop. "Poh!" said Mrs. Thrale, "the Bishop of [St. Asaph's] is never minded at a rout." BOSWELL. "When a

bishop places himself in a situation where he has no distinct character, and is of no consequence, he degrades the dignity of his order." JOHNSON. "Mr. Boswell, Madam, has said it as correctly as it could be."

Nor was it only in the dignitaries of the church that Johnson required a particular decorum and delicacy of behaviour; he justly considered that the clergy, as persons set apart for the sacred office of serving at the altar, and impressing the minds of men with the awful concerns of a future state, should be somewhat more serious than the generality of mankind, and have a suitable composure of manners. A due sense of the dignity of their profession, independent of higher motives, will ever prevent them from losing their distinction in an indiscriminate sociality; and did such as affect this know how much it lessens them in the eyes of those whom they think to please by it, they would feel themselves much mortified.

Johnson and his friend Beauclerk were once together in company with several clergymen, who thought that they should appear to advantage, by assuming the lax jollity of men of the world; which, as it may be observed in similar cases, they carried to noisy excess. Johnson, who they expected would be entertained, sat grave and silent for some time; at last, turning to Beauclerk, he said, by no means in a whisper, “This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive."

Even the dress of a clergyman should be in character, and nothing can be more despicable than conceited attempts at avoiding the appearance of the clerical order; attempts, which are as ineffectual as they are pitiful. Dr.

1 Dr. Shipley. See antè, p. 647. n. 2. — CROKER. 2 See ante, p. 127. - BosWELL.

3" London Chronicle," May 2. 1769. This respectable

Porteus, now Bishop of London, in his excellent charge when presiding over the diocese of Chester, justly animadverts upon this subject; and observes of a reverend fop, that he "can be but half a beau."

Addison, in "The Spectator," has given us a fine portrait of a clergyman, who is supposed to be a member of his Club; and Johnson has exhibited a model, in the character of Mr. Mudge, which has escaped the collectors of his works, but which he owned to me, and which indeed he showed to Sir Joshua Reynolds at the time when it was written. It bears the genuine marks of Johnson's best manner, and is as follows:

"The Reverend Mr. Zachariah Mudge, prebendary of Exeter, and vicar of St. Andrew's in Plymouth; a man equally eminent for his virtues and abilities, and at once beloved as a companion and reverenced as a pastor. He had that general curiosity to which no kind of knowledge is indifferent or superfluous; and that general benevolence by which no order of men is hated or despised.

"His principles both of thought and action were nation of objections, and judicious comparison of great and comprehensive. By a solicitous examiopposite arguments, he attained what inquiry never gives but to industry and perspicuity, a firm and

unshaken settlement of conviction. But his firmness was without asperity; for, knowing with how much difficulty truth was sometimes found, he did not wonder that many missed it.

"The general course of his life was determined by his profession; he studied the sacred volumes in the original languages; with what diligence and success his Notes upon the Psalms' give sufficient evidence. He once endeavoured to add the knowledge of Arabic to that of Hebrew; but, finding his thoughts too much diverted from other studies, after some time desisted from his purpose. "His discharge of parochial duties was exemplary. How his Sermons were composed, may be

learned from the excellent volume which he has

given to the public; but how they were delivered, can be known only to those that heard them; for, as he appeared in the pulpit, words will not easily describe him. His delivery, though unconstrained, was not negligent, and though forcible, was not turbulent; disdaining anxious nicety of emphasis, and laboured artifice of action, it captivated the hearer by its natural dignity; it roused the sluggish and fixed the volatile, and detained the mind upon the subject without directing it to the speaker.

66

The grandeur and solemnity of the preacher did not intrude upon his general behaviour; at the table of his friends he was a companion communicative and attentive, of unaffected manners, of

manly cheerfulness, willing to please, and easy to be pleased. His acquaintance was universally solicited, and his presence obstructed no enjoyment which religion did not forbid. Though studious, he was popular; though argumentative, he was modest; though inflexible, he was candid; and though metaphysical, yet orthodox."

man is there mentioned to have died on the 3d of April, that year, at Coffleet, [near Exeter] the seat of Thomas Veale, Esq., in his way to London. - BOSWELL.