TO THE REV. DR. TAYLOR '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. 'Remember me in your prayers, for vain is the help of man.-I am, dear sir, etc., SAM. JOHNSON. 'March 18, 1752.' 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,1 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 more painful to him than ever, he might very naturally, after her death, be tenderly disposed to charge himself with slight omissions and offences, 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 Reverend Mr. Jack son'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 sea. 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. VOL I N the sense of which would give him much uneasiness.1 Accordingly we find about a year after her decease that he thus addressed the Supreme Being: '0 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.' 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.' That he, in conformity with the opinion of 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.' 1 [See his beautiful and affecting Rambler, No. 54.-M.] 2 Prayers and Meditations. 8 Hawkins's Life of Johnson, p. 216. 4 [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.-M.] [The Non-Jurors held it lawful to pray for the dead, and from them Johnson acquired his practice.-A. B.] 5 Prayers and Meditations, But this state has not been looked upon with horror, but only as less gracious. He deposited the remains of Mrs. Johnson in the church of Bromley in Kent,1 to which he was probably led by the residence of his friend Hawkesworth at that place. The funeral sermon which he composed for her, which was never preached, but having been given to Dr. Taylor, has been published since his death, is a performance of uncommon excellence, and full of rational and pious comfort to such as are depressed by that severe affliction which Johnson felt When it is considered that it was written in such an agitation of mind, and in the short interval between her death and burial, it cannot be read without wonder. when he wrote it. From Mr. Francis Barber I have had the following authentic and artless account of the situation in which he found him recently after his wife's death: 'He was in great affliction. Mrs. Williams was then living in his house, which was in Gough Square. He was busy with the Dictionary. Mr. Shiels, and some others of the gentlemen who had formerly written for him, used 1 [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 Antiqua Jarvisiorum gente, Peatlinga, apud Leicestrienses, ortæ Uxoris, primis nuptiis, HENRICI Porter, Obiit Londini, Mense Mart. A.D. MDCCLII. -M.] (On the actual tombstone the date of death is wrongly stated to be 1753.-A. B.Į 1 to come about him. He had then little for himself, but frequently sent money to Mr. Shiels when in distress. The friends who visited him at that time were chiefly Dr. Bathurst, and Mr. Diamond, an apothecary in Cork Street, Burlington Gardens, with whom he and Mrs. Williams generally dined every Sunday. There was a talk of his going to Iceland with him, which would probably have happened, had he lived. There was also Mr. Cave, Dr. Hawkesworth, Mr. Ryland, merchant on Tower Hill, Mrs. Masters, the poetess, who lived with Mr. Cave, Mrs. Carter, and sometimes Mrs. Macaulay; also Mrs. Gardiner, wife of a tallow-chandler on Snow Hill, not in the learned way, but a worthy good woman; Mr. (now Sir Joshua) Reynolds; Mr. Miller, Mr. Dodsley, Mr. Bouquet, Mr. Payne, of Paternoster Row, booksellers; Mr. Strahan, the printer; the Earl of Orrery, Lord Southwell, Mr. Garrick.' Many are, no doubt, omitted in this catalogue of his friends, and, in particular, his humble friend Mr. Robert Levet, an obscure practiser in physic amongst the lower people, his fees being sometimes very small sums, sometimes whatever provisions his patients could afford him; but of such extensive practice in that way, that Mrs. Williams has told me, his walk was from Houndsditch to Marybone. It appears from Johnson's diary, that their acquaintance commenced Dr. Bathurst, though a physician of no inconsiderable merit, had not the good fortune to get much practice in London. He was, therefore, willing to accept of employment abroad, and, to the regret of all who knew him, fell a sacrifice to the destructive climate, in the expedition against the Havannah. Mr. Langton recollects the following passage in a letter from Dr. Johnson to Mr. Beauclerk: 'The Havannah is taken;-a conquest too dearly obtained; for Bathurst died before it. Vix Priamus tanti totaque Troja fuit, about the year 1746; and such was Johnson's predilection for him, and fanciful estimation of his moderate abilities, that I have heard him say he should not be satisfied though attended by all the College of Physicians, unless he had Mr. Levet with him. Ever since I was acquainted with Dr. Johnson, and many years before, as I have been assured by those who knew him earlier, Mr. Levet had an apartment in his house, or his chambers, and waited upon him every morning, through the whole course of his late and tedious breakfast. He was of a strange, grotesque appearance, stiff and formal in his manner, and seldom said a word while any company was present.1 The circle of his friends, indeed, at this time, was extensive and varied, far beyond what has been generally imagined. To trace his acquaintance with each particular person, if it could be done, would be a task of which the labour would not be repaid by the advantage. But exceptions are to be made; one of which must be a friend so eminent as Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was truly his dulce decus, and with whom he maintained an uninterrupted intimacy to the last hour of his life. When Johnson lived in Castle Street, Cavendish Square, he used frequently to visit two ladies who lived opposite to him, Miss Cotterells, daughters of Admiral Cotterell. Reynolds used also to visit there, and thus they met. Mr. Reynolds, as I have observed above, had, from the first reading of his 1 [A more particular account of this person may be found in the Gentleman's Magazine for February 1785. It originally appeared in the St. James's Chronicle, and, I believe, was written by the late George Steevens, Esq.-M.] ['Levet, madam, is a brutal fellow, but I have a good regard for him, for his brutality is in his manners, not in his mind.'-Madame D'Arblay's Diary, i. 115.—A. B.] |