It appears that his brother Nathanael had taken up his father's trade1; for it is mentioned that “subscriptions are taken in by the Editor, or N. Johnson, bookseller, of Lichfield." Notwithstanding the merit of Johnson, and the cheap price at which this book was offered, there were not subscribers enough to ensure a sufficient sale; so the work never appeared, and, probably, never was executed. We find him again this year at Birmingham, and there is preserved the following letter from him to Mr. Edward Cave, the original compiler and editor of the Gentleman's Magazine: "TO MR. CAVE. "Nov. 25, 1734. “SIR,—As you appear no less sensible than your readers of the defects of your poetical article, you will not be displeased, if, in order to the improvement of it, I communicate to you the sentiments of a person, who will undertake, on reasonable terms, sometimes to fill a column. "His opinion is, that the publick would not give you a bad reception, if, beside the current wit of the month, which a critical examination would generally reduce to a narrow compass, you admitted not only poems, inscriptions, &c. never printed before, which he will sometimes supply you with; but likewise short literary dissertations in Latin or English, critical [Nathanael kept the shop as long as he lived, as did his mother, after him, till her death, though on somewhat, it is to be presumed, of a lowered scale. Miss Seward, who, in such a matter as this, may perhaps be trusted, tells us that Miss Lucy Porter, from the age of twenty to her fortieth year (when she was raised to a state of competency by the death of her eldest brother), "had boarded in Lichfield with Dr. Johnson's mother, who still kept that little bookseller's shop by which her husband had supplied the scanty means of subsistence; meantime Lucy Porter kept the best company in our little city, but would make no engagement on market-days, lest Granny, as she called Mrs. Johnson, should catch cold by serving in the shop. There Lucy Porter took her place, standing behind the counter, nor thought it a disgrace to thank a poor person who purchased from her a penny battledoor."-Lett. 1. 117.-ED.] 2 Miss Cave, the grand-niece of Mr. Edw. Cave, has obligingly shown me the originals of this and the other letters of Dr. Johnson to him, which were first published in the Gentleman's Magazine, with notes by Mr. John Nichols, the worthy and indefatigable editor of that valuable miscellany, signed N.; some of which I shall occasionally transcribe in the course of this work-BOSWELL. [The present editor has felt justified by this and many other testimonies to the accuracy of Mr. Nichols, to admit into his notes and even into the text the information supplied by him.-ED.] ED. remarks on authours ancient or modern, forgotten poems that deserve revival, or loose pieces, like Floyer's', worth preserving. By this method, your literary article, for so it might be called, will, he thinks, be better recommended to the publick than by low jests, awkward buffoonery, or the dull scurrilities of either party. "If such a correspondence will be agreeable to you, be pleased to inform me in two posts, what the conditions are on which you shall expect it. Your late offer gives me no reason to distrust your generosity. If you engage in any literary projects besides this paper, I have other designs to impart, if I could be secure from having others reap the advantage of what I should hint. "Your letter by being directed to S. Smith, to be left at the Castle in Birmingham, Warwickshire, will reach "Your humble servant." Mr. Cave has put a note on this letter, "Answered Dec. 2." But whether any thing was done in consequence of it we are not informed. [In the year 1735, Mr. Walmesley's kindness endeavoured to procure him the mastership of the grammar school at Solihull in Warwickshire: this and the cause of failure appear by the following curious and characteristical letter, addressed to Mr. Walmesley, and preserved in the records of Pembroke College: 1 Sir John Floyer's Treatise on Cold Baths. Gent. Mag. 1734, p. 197. 2 [Is the use of will and shall in this sentence quite grammatical? Dr. Johnson seems sometimes to have used the word shall where it is now more customary to employ may: for instance, speaking of one dead, he said, "I trust he shall find mercy;" and again, in his "Prayers and Meditations" (see extract, post, p.66), Dr. Hall (who has examined the original in the Pembroke MSS.), informs me, that "no rational wish is now left but that we may meet at last," &c. was at first written that we shall meet, and afterwards altered to may. It may seem presumptuous to differ from Dr. Johnson on a grammatical point, but the norma loquendi of the present day would hardly tolerate the use of the word shall in any of the foregoing cases.-ED.] 3 A prize of fifty pounds for the best poem on "Life, Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell." See Gentleman's Magazine, vol. iv. p. 560.-NICHOLS. [A second prize of forty pounds, and some others of inferior value, were offered by Cave, at subsequent periods, for poems on similar subjects. It seems extraordinary that Johnson, whose wants were urgent, and who was glad, so soon after, to sell his LONDON for ten pounds, did not endeavour to obtain Cave's prize. Did his dignity of mind reject such a Mecenas as Cave? or did he make the attempt and afterwards conceal his failure in prudential silence ?-ED.] 4 [Sir J. Hawkins, who gives us to understand that he had seen Cave's answer, says, that he therein accepted the services of Johnson, and retained him as a correspondent and contributor to his Magazine" (p. 29), but his subsequent correspondence with Cave seems to negative this early connexion.-Ed.] “Solihull ye 30 August, 1735. Pemb. “SIR,— I was favoured with yours of ye 13th inst. in due time, MSS. but deferred answering it til now, it takeing up some time to informe the ffœofees [of the school] of the contents thereof; and before they would return an Answer, desired some time to make enquiry of y caracter of Mr. Johnson, who all agree that he is an excellent scholar, and upon that account deserves much better than to be schoolmaster of Solihull. But then he has the caracter of being a very haughty ill-natured gent, and y' he has such a way of distorting his fface (wh though he ca'nt help) ye gent. think it may affect some young ladds; for these two reasons he is not approved on, ye late master Mr. Crompton's huffing the ffcofees being stil in their memory. However we are all exstreamly obliged to you for thinking of us, and for proposeing so good a schollar, but more especially is, dear sir, your very humble servant, HENRY GRESWOLD." It was probably prior to this that a more humble ED attempt to obtain the situation of assistant in Mr.. Budworth's school, at Brewood, had also failed, and for the same reasons. Mr. Budworth was certainly no Nichols. stranger to the learning and abilities of Johnson, as he more than once lamented his having been under the necessity of declining the engagement from an apprehension that the paralytic affection under which Johnson laboured through life might become the object of imitation or ridicule amongst his pupils. This anecdote Captain Budworth, his grandson, confirmed to Mr. Nichols.] Johnson had, from his early youth, been sensible to the influence of female charms. When at Stourbridge school, he was much enamoured of Olivia Lloyd, a young quaker, to whom he wrote a copy of verses, which I have not been able to recover1; but He also wrote some amatory verses, before he left Staffordshire, which our author appears not to have seen. They were addressed "to Miss Hickman, playing on the spinet." At the back of this early poetical effusion, of which the original copy, in Johnson's handwriting, was obligingly communicated to me [as it also was to the present editor] by Mr. John Taylor, is the following attestation : "Written by the late Dr. Samuel Johnson, on my mother, then Miss Hickman, playing on the Spinet. J. Turton." Dr. Turton, the physician, writer of this certificate, who died in April, 1806, with what facility and elegance he could warble the amorous lay, will appear from the following lines which he wrote for his friend Mr. Edmund Hector. Verses to a Lady, on receiving from her a Sprig of Myrtle. "What hopes, what terrors does thy gift create, Soon must this bough, as you shall fix his doom, in his 71st year, was born in 1735. The verses in question, therefore, which have been printed in some late editions of Johnson's poems, must have been written before that year.-Miss Hickman, it is believed, was a lady of Staffordshire.-MALONE. 1 Mrs. Piozzi gives the following account of this little composition from Dr. Johnson's own relation to her, on her inquiring whether it was rightly attributed to him."I think it is now just forty years ago, that a young fellow had a sprig of myrtle given him by a girl he courted, and asked me to write him some verses that he might present her in return. I promised, but forgot; and when he called for his lines at the time agreed on-Sit still a moment, (says I) dear Mund, and I'll fetch them thee so stepped aside for five minutes, and wrote the nonsense you now keep such a stir about."-Anecdotes, p. 34. In my first edition I was induced to doubt the authenticity of this account, by the following circumstantial statement in a letter to me from Miss Seward of Lichfield :-"] :-"I know those verses were addressed to Lucy Porter, when he was enamoured of her in his boyish days, two or three years before he had seen her mother, his future wife. He wrote them at my grandfather's [Mr. Hunter, the schoolmaster], and gave them to Lucy in the presence of my mother, to whom he showed them on the instant. She used to repeat them to me, when I asked her for the Verses Dr. Johnson gave her on a Sprig of Myrtle, which he had stolen or begged from her bosom. We all know honest Lucy Porter to have been incapable of the mean vanity of applying to herself a compliment not intended for her." Such was this lady's statement, which I make no doubt she supposed to be correct; but it shows how dangerous it is to trust too implicitly to traditional testimony and ingenious inference; for Mr. Hector has lately assured me that Mrs. Piozzi's account is in this instance accurate, and that he was the person [as his name Edmund additionally proves] for whom Johnson wrote those verses, which have been erroneously ascribed to Mr. Hammond. I am obliged in so many instances to notice Mrs. Piozzi's incorrectness of relation, that I gladly seize this opportunity of acknowledging, that however often, she is not always inaccurate. The authour having been drawn into a controversy with Miss Anna Seward, in consequence of the preceding statement (which may be found in the Gentleman's Magazine," vol. lxiii and lxiv.), received the following letter from Mr. Hector, on the subject: His juvenile attachments to the fair sex were, however, very transient: and it is certain, that he formed no criminal connexion whatsoever. Mr. Hector, who lived with him in his younger days in the utmost intimacy and social freedom, has assured me, that even at that ardent season his conduct was strictly virtuous in that respect; and that though he loved to exhilarate himself with wine, he never knew him intoxicated but once. In a man whom religious education has secured from licentious indulgences, the passion of love, when once it has seized him, is exceedingly strong; being unimpaired by dissipation, and totally concentrated in one object. This was experienced by Johnson, when he became the fervent admirer of Mrs. Porter, after her first husband's death. Miss Porter told me, that when he was first introduced to her mother, his appearance was very forbidding; he was then lean and lank, so that his immense structure of bones was hideously striking to the eye, and the scars of "DEAR SIR,-I am sorry to see you are engaged in altercation with a lady, who seems unwilling to be convinced of her errors. Surely it would be more ingenuous to acknowledge than to persevere. "Lately, in looking over some papers I meant to burn, I found the original manuscript of the myrtle, with the date on it, 1731, which I have enclosed. "The true history (which I could swear to) is as follows: Mr. Morgan Graves, the elder brother of a worthy clergyman near Bath, with whom I was acquainted, waited upon a lady in this neighbourhood, who at parting presented him the branch. He showed it me, and wished much to return the compliment in verse. I applied to Johnson, who was with me, and in about half an hour dictated the verses which I sent to my friend. "I most solemnly declare, at that time, Johnson was an entire stranger to the Porter family; and it was almost two years after that I introduced him to the acquaintance of Porter, whom I bought my clothes of. "If you intend to convince this obstinate woman, and to exhibit to the publick the truth of your narrative, you are at liberty to make what use you please of this statement. I hope you will pardon me for taking up so much of your time. Wishing you multos et felices annos, I shall subscribe myself your obliged humble servant, E. HECTOR.-Birmingham, Jan. 9th, 1794."-BOSWELL. [Of the supposed attachment of Dr. Johnson to the daughter of his wife there is no evidence whatsoever, but the assertion of Miss Seward, whose anecdotes have turned out to be in almost every instance worse than nothing; and, in this case, if it were worth while to seek for any evidence beyond Mr. Hector's, the dates would disprove Miss Seward's statement, which it is but too evident that she made with the view of disparaging and ridiculing Dr. Johnson.-ED.] |