324 Brothers and sisters. [A.D. 1758. to tell you, that I wish you and her all that can conduce to your happiness. I am, Sir, 'Your most obliged, 'And most humble servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.' 'Gough-square, Dec. 24, 1757.' In 1758 we find him, it should seem, in as easy and pleasant a state of existence, as constitutional unhappiness ever permitted him to enjoy. 'TO BENNET LANGTON, ESQ., AT LANGTON, LINCOLNSHIRE'. 'DEAREST SIR, Do you take You are busy 'I must indeed have slept very fast, not to have been awakened by your letter. None of your suspicions are true; I am not much richer than when you left me; and, what is worse, my omission of an answer to your first letter, will prove that I am not much wiser. But I go on as I formerly did, designing to be some time or other both rich and wise; and yet cultivate neither mind nor fortune. notice of my example, and learn the danger of delay. as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am. 'But you do not seem to need my admonition. in acquiring and in communicating knowledge, and while you are studying, enjoy the end of study, by making others wiser and happier. I was much pleased with the tale that you told me of being tutour to your sisters. I, who have no sisters nor brothers, look with some degree of innocent envy on those who may be said to be born to friends; and cannot see, without wonder, how rarely that native union is afterwards regarded. It sometimes, indeed, happens, that some supervenient cause of discord may overpower this original amity; but it seems to me more frequently thrown away with levity, or lost by negligence, than destroyed by injury or violence. We tell the ladies that good wives make good husbands; I believe it is a more certain position that good brothers make good sisters. 'I am satisfied with your stay at home, as Juvenal with his friend's This letter is misdated. It was written in Jan. 1759, and not in 1758. Johnson says that he is forty-nine. In Jan. 1758 he was forty-eight. He mentions the performance of Cleone, which was at the end of 1758; and he says that 'Murphy is to have his Orphan of China acted next month. It was acted in the spring of 1759. retirement Aetat. 49.] Dodsley's CLEONE. 325 retirement to Cume: I know that your absence is best, though it be not best for me. 'Quamvis digressu veteris confusus amici, Laudo tamen vacuis quod sedem figere Cumis 'Langton is a good Cume, but who must be Sibylla? Mrs. Langton is as wise as Sibyl, and as good; and will live, if my wishes can prolong life, till she shall in time be as old. But she differs in this, that she has not scattered her precepts in the wind, at least not those which she bestowed upon you. "The two Wartons just looked into the town, and were taken to see Cleone, where, David says, they were starved for want of company to keep them warm. David and Doddy3 have had a new quarrel, and, Į * Juvenal, Sat. iii. 1. breast rebel, When injured Thales bids the town farewell, Yet still my calmer thoughts his choice commend, I praise the hermit, but regret the Resolved at length from vice and To breathe in distant fields a purer And fixed on Cambria's solitary shore Give to St. David one true Briton more.' Johnson's London, l. 1. Mr. Garrick. BOSWELL. 3 Mr. Dodsley, the Authour of Cleone. BOSWELL. Garrick, according to Davies, had rejected Dodsley's Cleone, and had termed it a cruel, bloody, and unnatural play.' Davies's Garrick, i. 223. Johnson himself said of it:-'I am afraid there is more blood than brains.' Post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection. The night it was brought out at Covent Garden, Garrick appeared for the first time as Marplot in the Busy Body at Drury Lane. The next morning he wrote to congratulate Dodsley on his success, and asked him at the same time to let him know how he could support his interest without absolutely giving up his own. To this Dodsley returned a cold reply. Garrick wrote back as follows: 'Master Robert Dodsley, When I first read your peevish answer to my well-meant proposal to you, I was much disturbed at it-but when I considered, that some minds cannot bear the smallest portion of success, I most sincerely pitied you; and when I found in the same letter, that you were graciously pleased to dismiss me from your acquaintance, I could not but confess so apparent an obligation, and am with due acknowledgements, Master Robert Dodsley, David Garrick.' Garrick Corres., i. 80 (where the letters that passed are wrongly dated 1757). Mrs. Bellamy in her Life (iii. 109) says that on the evening of the performance she was provoked by something that Dodsley said, 'which,' she continues, 'made me answer that good man with a petulance which afterwards gave me uneasiness. I told him that I had a reputation to lose as an actress; but, as for his piece, Mr. Garrick had anticipated 326 Reynolds's prices for portraits. [A.D. 1758. think, cannot conveniently quarrel any more. Cleone was well acted by all the characters, but Bellamy' left nothing to be desired. I went the first night, and supported it, as well as I might; for Doddy, you know, is my patron, and I would not desert him. The play was very well received. Doddy, after the danger was over, went every night to the stage-side, and cried at the distress of poor Cleone3. 'I have left off housekeeping, and therefore made presents of the game which you were pleased to send me. The pheasant I gave to Mr. Richardson, the bustard to Dr. Lawrence, and the pot I placed with Miss Williams, to be eaten by myself. She desires that her compliments and good wishes may be accepted by the family; and I make the same request for myself. Mr. Reynolds has within these few days raised his price to twenty guineas a head, and Miss is much employed in miniatures'. I know the damnation of it publicly, the preceding evening, at the Bedford Coffee-house, where he had declared that it could not pass muster, as it was the very worst piece ever exhibited.' Shenstone (Works, iii. 288) writing five weeks after the play was brought out, says :-'Dodsley is now going to print his fourth edition. He sold 2000 of his first edition the very first day he published it.' The price was eighteen-pence. Mrs. Bellamy (Life, iii. 108) says that Johnson was present at the last rehearsal. 'When I came to repeat, "Thou shalt not murder," Dr. Johnson caught me by the arm, and that somewhat too briskly, saying, at the same time, "It is a commandment, and must be spoken, Thou shalt not murder." As I had not then the honour of knowing personally that great genius, I was not a little displeased at his inforcing his instructions with so much vehemence.' The next night she heard, she says, amidst the general applause, 'the same voice which had instructed me in the commandment, exclaim aloud from the pit, "I will write a copy of verses upon her myself." I knew that my success was insured.' See post, May 11, 1783. 2 Dodsley had published his London and his Vanity of Human Wishes (ante, pp. 124, 193), and had had a large share in the Dictionary, (ante, p. 183). 3 It is to this that Churchill refers in the following lines : 'Let them [the Muses] with Glover o'er Medea doze ; Let them with Dodsley wail Cleone's woes, Whilst he, fine feeling creature, all in tears, Melts as they melt, and weeps with weeping Peers.' The Journey. Poems, ii. 328. See post, p. 350, note. 5 Mr. Samuel Richardson, authour of Clarissa. BOSWELL. In 1753 when in Devonshire he charged five guineas a head (Taylor's Reynolds, i. 89); shortly afterwards, when he removed to London, twelve guineas (ib. p. 101); in 1764, thirty guineas; for a whole length 150 guineas (ib. p. 224). Northcote writes that 'he sometimes has lamented the being interrupted in his work by idle visitors, saying, "those persons do not consider that my time is worth to me five guineas an hour." Northcote's Reynolds, i. 83. 7 'Miss Reynolds at first amused herself by painting miniature por not Aetat. 49.] Johnson's SHAKSPEARE delayed. 327 not any body [else] whose prosperity has encreased since you left them. 'Murphy is to have his Orphan of China acted next month; and is therefore, I suppose, happy'. I wish I could tell you of any great good to which I was approaching, but at present my prospects do not much delight me; however, I am always pleased when I find that you, dear Sir, remember, 'Your affectionate, humble servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.' 'Jan. 9, 1758.' SIR, 'TO MR. BURNEY, AT LYNNE, Norfolk. 'Your kindness is so great, and my claim to any particular regard from you so little, that I am at a loss how to express my sense of your favours; but I am, indeed, much pleased to be thus distinguished by you. 'I am ashamed to tell you that my Shakspeare will not be out so soon as I promised my subscribers; but I did not promise them more than I promised myself. It will, however, be published before summer. 'I have sent you a bundle of proposals, which, I think, do not profess more than I have hitherto performed. I have printed many of the plays, and have hitherto left very few passages unexplained; where I am quite at a loss, I confess my ignorance, which is seldom done by commentators3. 'I have, likewise, enclosed twelve receipts; not that I mean to impose upon you the trouble of pushing them, with more importunity than may seem proper, but that you may rather have more than fewer than you shall want. The proposals you will disseminate as there shall be an opportunity. I once printed them at length in the Chronicle, and traits, and in that part of the art was particularly successful. In her attempts at oil-painting, however, she did not succeed, which made Reynolds say jestingly, that her pictures in that way made other people laugh and him cry; and as he did not approve of her painting in oil, she generally did it by stealth.' Ib. ii. 160. Murphy was far from happy. The play was not produced till April ; by the date of Johnson's letter, he had not by any means reached the end of what he calls 'the first, and indeed, the last, disagreeable controversy that he ever had with Mr. Garrick.' Murphy's Garrick, p. 213. 2 This letter was an answer to one in which was enclosed a draft for the payment of some subscriptions to his Shakspeare. BOSWELL. 3 In the Preface he says:-(Works, v. 152) 'I have not passed over with affected superiority what is equally difficult to the reader and to myself, but where I could not instruct him, have owned my ignorance.' some 328 The garret in Gough-square. [A.D. 1758. some of my friends (I believe Mr. Murphy, who formerly wrote the Gray's-Inn Journal) introduced them with a splendid encomium. 'Since the Life of Browne, I have been a little engaged, from time to time, in the Literary Magazine, but not very lately. I have not the collection by me, and therefore cannot draw out a catalogue of my own parts, but will do it, and send it. Do not buy them, for I will gather all those that have anything of mine in them, and send them to Mrs. Burney, as a small token of gratitude for the regard which she is pleased to bestow upon me. 'I am, Sir, 'And most humble servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.' 'London, March 8, 1758.' Dr. Burney has kindly favoured me with the following memorandum, which I take the liberty to insert in his own genuine easy style. I love to exhibit sketches of my illustrious friend by various eminent hands. 'Soon after this, Mr. Burney, during a visit to the capital, had an interview with him in Gough-square, where he dined and drank tea with him, and was introduced to the acquaintance of Mrs. Williams. After dinner, Mr. Johnson proposed to Mr. Burney to go up with him into his garret, which being accepted, he there found about five or six Greek folios, a deal writing-desk, and a chair and a half. Johnson giving to his guest the entire seat, tottered himself on one with only three legs and one arm'. Here he gave Mr. Burney Mrs. Williams's 1 Northcote gives the following account of this same garret in describing how Reynolds introduced Roubiliac to Johnson. 'Johnson received him with much civility, and took them up into a garret, which he considered as his library; where, besides his books, all covered with dust, there was an old crazy deal table, and a still worse and older elbow chair, having only three legs. In this chair Johnson seated himself, after having, with considerable dexterity and evident practice, first drawn it up against the wall, which served to support it on that side on which the leg was deficient.' North cote's Reynolds, i. 75. Miss Reynolds |