Aetat. 43.]

Topham Beauclerk.

249

imagination, to throw a lustre upon his other qualities'; and, in a short time, the moral, pious Johnson, and the gay, dissipated Beauclerk, were companions. 'What a coalition! (said Garrick, when he heard of this;) I shall have my old friend to bail out of the Round-house. But I can bear testimony that it was a very agreeable association. Beauclerk was too polite, and valued learning and wit too much, to offend Johnson by sallies of infidelity or licentiousness; and Johnson delighted in the good qualities of Beauclerk, and hoped to correct the evil. Innumerable were the scenes in which Johnson was amused by these young men. Beauclerk could take more liberty with him, than any body with whom I ever saw him; but, on the other hand, Beauclerk was not spared by his respectable companion, when reproof was proper. Beauclerk had such a propensity to satire, that at one time Johnson said to him, 'You never open your mouth but with intention to give pain; and you have often given me pain, not from the power of what you said, but from seeing your intention.' At another time. applying to him, with a slight alteration, a line of Pope, he said, 'Thy love of folly, and thy scorn of fools-3

'Lord Charlemont said that 'Beauclerk possessed an exquisite taste, various accomplishments, and the most perfect good breeding. He was eccentric, often querulous, entertaining a contempt for the generality of the world, which the politeness of his manners could not always conceal; but to those whom he liked most generous and friendly. Devoted at one time to pleasure, at another to literature, sometimes absorbed in play, sometimes in books, he was altogether one of the most accomplished, and when in good humour and surrounded by those who suited his fancy, one of the most agreeable men that could possibly exist.' Lord Charlemont's Life, i. 210. Hawkins writes (Life, p. 422) that 'over all his behaviour there beamed such a sunshine of cheerfulness and goodhumour as communicated itself to all around him.' Mrs. Piozzi said of

himTopham Beauclerk (wicked. and profligate as he wished to be accounted) was yet a man of very strict veracity. Oh Lord! how I did hate that horrid Beauclerk,' Hayward's Piozzi, i. 348. Rogers (Table-Talk, p. 40) said that 'Beauclerk was a strangely absent person.' He once went to dress for a dinner-party in his own house. 'He forgot all about his guests; thought that it was bed-time, and got into bed. His servant, coming to tell him that his guests were waiting for him, found him fast asleep.'

2 It was to the Round-house that Captain Booth was first taken in Fielding's Amelia, Book i, chap. 2.

36

'Blends, in exception to all general rules,

Your taste of follies with our scorn of fools.'

Pope, Moral Essays, ii. 275.

250

Johnson the Idle Apprentice.

[A.D. 1752.

Every thing thou dost shews the one, and every thing thou say'st the other.' At another time he said to him, 'Thy body is all vice, and thy mind all virtue.' Beauclerk not seeming to relish the compliment, Johnson said, 'Nay, Sir, Alexander the Great, marching in triumph into Babylon, could not have desired to have had more said to him.'

Johnson was some time with Beauclerk at his house at Windsor, where he was entertained with experiments in natural philosophy'. One Sunday, when the weather was very fine, Beauclerk enticed him, insensibly, to saunter about all the morning. They went into a church-yard, in the time of divine service, and Johnson laid himself down at his ease upon one of the tomb-stones. Now, Sir, (said Beauclerk) you are like Hogarth's Idle Apprentice.' When Johnson got his pension, Beauclerk said to him, in the humorous phrase of Falstaff, ‘I hope you'll now purge and live cleanly like a gentleman'.'

One night when Beauclerk and Langton had supped at a tavern in London, and sat till about three in the morning, it came into their heads to go and knock up Johnson, and see if they could prevail on him to join them in a ramble. They rapped violently at the door of his chambers in the Temple, till at last he appeared in his shirt, with his little black wig on the top of his head, instead of a nightcap, and a poker in his hand, imagining, probably, that some ruffians were coming to attack him. When he discovered who they were, and was told their errand, he smiled, and with great good humour agreed to their proposal: 'What, is it you, you dogs! I'll have a frisk with you.' He was soon drest, and they sallied forth together into Covent Garden, where the greengrocers and fruiterers were beginning to arrange their hampers, just come in from the country. Johnson made some attempts to help them; but the

In the college which The Club was to set up at St. Andrew's, Beauclerk was to have the chair of natural philosophy. Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 25, 1773. Goldsmith, writing to Langton in 1771, says :— :-' Mr. Beauclerk is now going directly forward to become a second Boyle; deep in chymistry and physics.'

Forster's Goldsmith, ii. 283. Boswell described to Temple, in 1775, Beauclerk's villa at Muswell Hill, with its 'observatory, laboratory for chymical experiments.' Boswell's Letters, p. 194.

2 'I'll purge, and leave sack, and live cleanly as a nobleman should do.' 1 Henry IV. Act v. sc. 4.

honest

Aetat. 44.] A frisk with Beauclerk and Langton.

251

honest gardeners stared so at his figure and manner, and odd interference, that he soon saw his services were not relished. They then repaired to one of the neighbouring taverns, and made a bowl of that liquor called Bishop', which Johnson had always liked; while in joyous contempt of sleep, from which he had been roused, he repeated the festive lines,

'Short, O short then be thy reign,

And give us to the world again!' 2

They did not stay long, but walked down to the Thames, took a boat, and rowed to Billingsgate. Beauclerk and Johnson were so well pleased with their amusement, that they resolved to persevere in dissipation for the rest of the day but Langton deserted them, being engaged to breakfast with some young Ladies. Johnson scolded him for 'leaving his social friends, to go and sit with a set of wretched un-idea'd girls.' Garrick being told of this ramble, said to him smartly, 'I heard of your frolick t'other night. You'll be in the Chronicle.' Upon which Johnson afterwards observed, 'He durst not do such a thing. His wife would not let him!'

1753 ÆTAT. 44.]-He entered upon this year 1753 with his usual piety, as appears from the following prayer, which I transcribed from that part of his diary which he burnt a few days before his death3:

'Jan. 1, 1753, N. S. which I shall use for the future.

'Almighty GOD, who hast continued my life to this day, grant that,

'Bishop. A cant word for a mixture of wine, oranges, and sugar.' Johnson's Dictionary.

Mr. Langton has recollected, or Dr. Johnson repeated, the passage wrong. The lines are in Lord Lansdowne's Drinking Song to Sleep, and run thus :-

'Short, very short be then thy reign,

'For I'm in haste to laugh and
drink again.' BOSWELL.

Lord Lansdowne was the Granville of
Pope's couplet-

'But why then publish? Granville
the polite,

3

And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write.'

Prologue to the Satires, 1. 135.

Boswell in his Hebrides (Aug. 18, 1773) says that Johnson, on starting from Edinburgh, left behind in an open drawer in Boswell's house 'one volume of a pretty full and curious Diary of his life, of which I have a few fragments.' He also states (post, under Dec. 9, 1784):— 'I owned to him, that having accidentally seen them [two quarto volumes of his Life] I had read a great deal in them.' It would seem that he had also transcribed a portion.

by

252

THE ADVENTURER.

(A.D. 1753.

Make me to remember,

Make me so to consider

by the assistance of thy Holy Spirit, I may improve the time which thou shalt grant me, to my eternal salvation. to thy glory, thy judgements and thy mercies. the loss of my wife, whom thou hast taken from me, that it may dispose me, by thy grace, to lead the residue of my life in thy fear. Grant this, O LORD, for JESUS CHRIST'S sake. Amen.'

He now relieved the drudgery of his Dictionary, and the melancholy of his grief, by taking an active part in the composition of The Adventurer, in which he began to write April 10', marking his essays with the signature T2, by which most. of his papers in that collection are distinguished: those, however, which have that signature and also that of Mysargyrus, were not written by him, but, as I suppose, by Dr. Bathurst. Indeed Johnson's energy of thought and richness of language, are still more decisive marks than any signature. As a proof of this, my readers, I imagine, will not doubt that Number 39, on sleep, is his; for it not only has the general texture and colour of his style, but the authours with whom he was peculiarly conversant are readily introduced in it in cursory allusion. The translation of a passage in Statius3 quoted in that paper, and marked C. B. has been erroneously ascribed to Dr. Bathurst, whose Christian name was Richard. How much this amiable man actually contributed to The Adventurer, cannot be known. Let me add, that Hawkesworth's imitations of Johnson are sometimes so happy, that it is extremely difficult to distinguish them, with certainty, from the compositions of his great archetype. Hawkesworth was his closest imitator, a circumstance of which that writer would once have been proud to be told; though, when he had become elated by having risen into some

This is inconsistent with what immediately follows, for No. 39 on Sleep was published on March 20.

2 Hawkesworth in the last number of The Adventurer says that he had help at first from A.; 'but this resource soon failing, I was obliged to carry on the publication alone, except some casual supplies, till I obtained from the gentlemen who have distinguished their papers by T and Z, such assistance as I most wished.'

In a note he says that the papers signed Z are by the Rev. Mr. Warton. The papers signed A are written in a light style. In Southey's Cowper, i. 47, it is said that Bonnell Thornton wrote them.

3 Boswell had read the passage carelessly. Statius is mentioned, but the writer goes on to quote Cowley, whose Latin lines C. B. has translated. Johnson's Works, iv. 10.

degree

Aetat. 44.]

A letter to Dr. Warton.

253

degree of consequence, he, in a conversation with me, had the provoking effrontery to say he was not sensible of it'.

Johnson was truly zealous for the success of The Adventurer; and very soon after his engaging in it, he wrote the following letter:

'DEAR SIR,

'TO THE REVEREND DR. JOSEPH WARTON.

'I ought to have written to you before now, but I ought to do many things which I do not; nor can I, indeed, claim any merit from this letter; for being desired by the authours and proprietor of The Adventurer to look out for another hand, my thoughts necessarily fixed upon you, whose fund of literature will enable you to assist them, with very little interruption of your studies.

'They desire you to engage to furnish one paper a month, at two guineas a paper, which you may very readily perform. We have considered that a paper should consist of pieces of imagination, pictures of life, and disquisitions of literature. The part which depends on the imagination is very well supplied, as you will find when you read the paper; for descriptions of life, there is now a treaty almost made with an authour and an authouress; and the province of criticism and literature they are very desirous to assign to the commentator on Virgil.

'I hope this proposal will not be rejected, and that the next post will bring us your compliance. I speak as one of the fraternity, though I have no part in the paper, beyond now and then a motto; but two of the writers are my particular friends, and I hope the pleasure of seeing a third united to them, will not be denied to, dear Sir,

'March 8, 1753.'

'Your most obedient,

'And most humble servant,

'SAM. JOHNSON.'

The consequence of this letter was, Dr. Warton's enriching the collection with several admirable essays.

Johnson's saying 'I have no part in the paper beyond now and then a motto,' may seem inconsistent with his being the authour

Malone says that 'Johnson was fond of him, but latterly owned that Hawkesworth-who had set out a modest, humble man-was one of the many whom success in the world had spoiled. He was latterly,

as Sir Joshua Reynolds told me, an affected insincere man, and a great coxcomb in his dress. He had no literature whatever.' Prior's Malone, p. 441. See post, April 11 and May 7, 1773, and Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 3. of