Aetat. 54.]

Lord Loughborough.

387

wild',' as to mark his country; which, if any Scotchman should affect to forget, I should heartily despise him. Notwithstanding the difficulties which are to be encountered by those who have not had the advantage of an English education, he by degrees formed a mode of speaking to which Englishmen do not deny the praise of elegance. Hence his distinguished oratory, which he exerted in his own country as an advocate in the Court of Session, and a ruling elder of the Kirk, has had its fame and ample reward, in much higher spheres. When I look back on this noble person at Edinburgh, in situations so unworthy of his brilliant powers, and behold LORD LOUGHBOROUGH at London, the change seems almost like one of the metamorphoses in Ovid; and as his two preceptors, by refining his utterance, gave currency to his talents, we may say in the words of that poet, 'Nam vos mutastis??

I have dwelt the longer upon this remarkable instance of successful parts and assiduity; because it affords animating encouragement to other gentlemen of North-Britain to try their fortunes in the southern part of the Island, where they may hope to gratify their utmost ambition; and now that we are one people by the Union, it would surely be illiberal to maintain, that they have not an equal title with the natives of any other part of his Majesty's dominions.

Johnson complained that a man who disliked him repeated his sarcasm to Mr. Sheridan, without telling him what followed, which was, that after a pause he added, However, I am glad that Mr. Sheridan has a pension, for he is a very good man.' Sheridan could never forgive this hasty contemptuous expression. It rankled in his mind; and though I informed him of all that Johnson said, and that he would be very glad to meet him amicably, he positively declined repeated offers which I made, and once went off abruptly from a house where he and

See post under March 30, 1783, for Lord Loughborough.

388

Sheridan's attack on Johnson.

[A.D. 1763.

I were engaged to dine, because he was told that Dr. Johnson was to be there 1. I have no sympathetick feeling with such persevering resentment. It is painful when there is a breach between those who have lived together socially and cordially; and I wonder that there is not, in all such cases, a mutual wish that it should be healed. I could perceive that Mr. Sheridan was by no means satisfied with Johnson's acknowledging him to be a good man. That could not sooth his injured vanity. I could not but smile, at the same time that I was offended, to observe Sheridan in The Life of Swift3, which he afterwards published, attempting, in the writhings of his resentment, to depreciate Johnson, by characterising him as A writer of gigantick fame in these days of little

·

1 See post, May 17, 1783, and June 24, 1784. Sheridan was not of a forgiving nature. For some years he would not speak to his famous son: yet he went with his daughters to the theatre to see one of his pieces performed. The son took up his station by one of the side scenes, opposite to the box where they sat, and there continued, unobserved, to look at them during the greater part of the night. On his return home he burst into tears, and owned how deeply it had gone to his heart, "to think that there sat his father and his sisters before him, and yet that he alone was not permitted to go near them."' Moore's Sheridan, i. 167.

2 As Johnson himself said :—' Men hate more steadily than they love; and if I have said something to hurt a man once, I shall not get the better of this by saying many things to please him.' Post, Sept. 15, 1777.

P. 447. Boswell. 'There is another writer, at present of gigantic fame in these days of little men, who has pretended to scratch out a life of Swift, but so miserably executed as only to reflect back on himself that disgrace which he meant to throw

·

upon the character of the Dean.' The Life of Doctor Swift, Swift's Works, ed. 1803, ii. 200. There is a passage in the Lives of the Poets (Works, viii. 43) in which Johnson might be supposed playfully to have anticipated this attack. He is giving an account of Blackmore's imaginary Literary Club of Lay Monks, of which the hero was one Mr. Johnson.' 'The rest of the Lay Monks,' he writes, 'seem to be but feeble mortals, in comparison with the gigantick Johnson.' See also post, Oct. 16, 1769. Horace Walpole (Letters, v. 458) spoke no less scornfully than Sheridan of Johnson and his contemporaries. On April 27, 1773, after saying that he should like to be intimate with Anstey (the author of the New Bath Guide), or with the author of the Heroic Epistle, he continues I have no thirst to know the rest of my contemporaries, from the absurd bombast of Dr. Johnson down to the silly Dr. Goldsmith; though the latter changeling has had bright gleams of parts, and the former had sense, till he changed it for words, and sold it for a pension. Don't think me scornful. Recollect that I have seen Pope and lived with Gray.'

men ;

Aetat. 54.]

Mrs. Sheridan.

389

men;' that very Johnson whom he once so highly admired and venerated.

This rupture with Sheridan deprived Johnson of one of his most agreeable resources for amusement in his lonely evenings; for Sheridan's well-informed, animated, and bustling mind never suffered conversation to stagnate; and Mrs. Sheridan' was a most agreeable companion to an intellectual man. She was sensible, ingenious, unassuming, yet communicative. I recollect, with satisfaction, many pleasing hours which I passed with her under the hospitable roof of her husband, who was to me a very kind friend. Her novel, entitled Memoirs of Miss Sydney Biddulph, contains an excellent moral while it inculcates a future state of retribution; and what it teaches is impressed upon the

2

My position has been very well illustrated by Mr. Belsham of Bedford, in his Essay on Dramatic Poetry. "The fashionable doctrine (says he) both of moralists and criticks in these times is, that virtue and happiness are constant concomitants; and it is regarded as a kind of dramatick impiety to maintain that virtue should not be rewarded, nor vice punished in the last scene of the last act of every tragedy. This conduct in our modern poets is, however, in my opinion, extremely injudicious; for, it labours in vain to inculcate a doctrine in theory, which every one knows to be false in fact, viz. that virtue in real life is always productive of happiness; and vice of misery. Thus Congreve concludes the Tragedy of The Mourning

'For blessings ever wait on virtuous deeds,

And though a late, a sure reward succeeds.'

'When a man eminently virtuous, a Brutus, a Cato, or a Socrates, finally sink under the pressure of accumulated misfortune, we are not only led to entertain a more indignant hatred of vice than if he rose from his distress, but we are inevitably induced to cherish the sublime idea that a day of future retribution will arrive when he shall receive not merely poetical, but real and substantial justice.' Essays Philosophical, Historical, and Literary, London, 1791, vol. II. 8vo. p. 317.

This is well reasoned and well expressed. I wish, indeed, that the ingenious authour had not thought it necessary to introduce any instance of a man eminently virtuous;' as he would then have avoided mentioning such a ruffian as Brutus under that description. Mr. Belsham discovers in his Essays so much reading and thinking, and good composition, that I regret his not having been fortunate enough to

390

Mr. Thomas Davies.

[A.D. 1763.

mind by a series of as deep distress as can affect humanity, in the amiable and pious heroine who goes to her grave unrelieved, but resigned, and full of hope of 'heaven's mercy.' Johnson paid her this high compliment upon it: 'I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much "'

Mr. Thomas Davies the actor, who then kept a bookseller's shop in Russel-street, Covent-garden', told me that Johnson was very much his friend, and came frequently to his house, where he more than once invited me to meet him; but by some unlucky accident or other he was prevented from coming

to us.

Mr. Thomas Davies was a man of good understanding and talents, with the advantage of a liberal education3. Though

be educated a member of our excellent national establishment. Had he not been nursed in nonconformity, he probably would not have been tainted with those heresies (as I sincerely, and on no slight investigation, think them) both in religion and politicks, which, while I read, I am sure, with candour, I cannot read without offence. BOSWELL. Boswell's 'position has been illustrated' with far greater force by Johnson. 'It has been the boast of some swelling moralists, that every man's fortune was in his own power, that prudence supplied the place of all other divinities, and that happiness is the unfailing consequence of virtue. But surely the quiver of Omnipotence is stored with arrows against which the shield of human virtue, however adamantine it has been boasted, is held up in vain; we do not always suffer by our crimes; we are not always protected by our innocence.' The Adventurer, No. 120. See also Rasselas, chap. 27.

'Charles Fox said that Mrs. Sheridan's Sydney Biddulph was the best of all modern novels. By the by [R. B.] Sheridan used to declare that he had never read it.' Rogers's Table

Talk, p. 90. The editor says, in a note on this passage:-‘The incident in The School for Scandal of Sir Oliver's presenting himself to his relations in disguise is manifestly taken by Sheridan from his mother's novel.'

2 No. 8.-The very place where I was fortunate enough to be introduced to the illustrious subject of this work, deserves to be particularly marked. I never pass by it without feeling reverence and regret. Bos

WELL.

3

Johnson said: 'Sir, Davies has learning enough to give credit to a clergyman.' Post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection. The spiteful Steevens thus wrote about Davies: -'His concern ought to be with the outside of books; but Dr. Johnson, Dr. Percy, and some others have made such a coxcomb of him, that he is now hardy enough to open volumes, turn over their leaves, and give his opinions of their contents. Did I ever tell you an anecdote of him? About ten years ago I wanted the Oxford Homer, and called at Davies's to ask for it, as I had seen one thrown about his shop. Will you believe me, when I assure you somewhat

Aetat. 54.]

Mr. Davies's back-parlour.

391

somewhat pompous, he was an entertaining companion; and his literary performances' have no inconsiderable share of merit. He was a friendly and very hospitable man. Both he and his wife, (who has been celebrated for her beauty2,) though upon the stage for many years, maintained an uniform decency of character; and Johnson esteemed them, and lived in as easy an intimacy with them, as with any family which he used to visit3. Mr. Davies recollected several of Johnson's remarkable sayings, and was one of the best of the many imitators of his voice and manner, while relating them. He increased my impatience more and more to see the extraordinary man whose works I highly valued, and whose conversation was reported to be so peculiarly excellent.

At last, on Monday the 16th of May, when I was sitting in Mr. Davies's back-parlour, after having drunk tea with him and Mrs. Davies, Johnson unexpectedly came into the shop*; and

he told me "he had but one, and that he kept for his own reading?" Garrick Corres, i. 608.

'Johnson, writing to Beattie, post, Aug 21, 1780, says :-' Mr. Davies has got great success as an author, generated by the corruption of a bookseller.' His principal works are Memoirs of Garrick, 1780, and Dramatic Miscellanies, 1784.

2 Churchill, in the Rosciad, thus celebrated his wife and mocked his recitation :

'With him came mighty Davies. On my life

That Davies hath a very pretty wife :

not help thinking there must be some mistake in this tradition).' Lamb's Works, ed. 1840, p. 517.

3

See Johnson's letter to Davies, post, June 18, 1783.

4

Mr. Murphy, in his Essay on the Life and Genius of Dr. Johnson, [p. 106], has given an account of this meeting considerably different from mine, I am persuaded without any consciousness of errour. His memory, at the end of near thirty years, has undoubtedly deceived him, and he supposes himself to have been present at a scene, which he has probably heard inaccurately described by others. In my note taken on the

Statesman all over!-In plots very day, in which I am confident I

famous grown!—

He mouths a sentence, as curs mouth a bone.'

Churchill's Poems, i. 16. See post, under April 20, 1764, and March 20, 1778. Charles Lamb in a note to his Essay on the Tragedies of Shakespeare says of Davies, that he 'is recorded to have recited the Paradise Lost better than any man in England in his day (though I can

marked every thing material that passed, no mention is made of this gentleman; and I am sure, that I should not have omitted one so well known in the literary world. It may easily be imagined that this, my first interview with Dr. Johnson, with all its circumstances, made a strong impression on my mind, and would be registered with peculiar attention. BOSWELL.

Mr. Davies