1774.]

A visit to Mr. Myddelton.

453

There are some remains of leaden pipes at Caernarvon, which, I suppose, only conveyed water from one part of the building to another. Had the garrison had no other supply, the Welsh, who must know where the pipes were laid, could easily have cut them.

AUGUST 29.

We came to the house of Mr. Myddelton, (on Monday,) where we staid to September 6, and were very kindly entertained. How we spent our time, I am not very able to tell'.

We saw the wood, which is diversified and romantick.

SEPTEMBER 4, SUNDAY.

We dined with Mr. Myddelton, the clergyman, at Denbigh, where I saw the harvest-men very decently dressed, after the afternoon service, standing to be hired. On other days, they stand at about four in the morning. They are hired from day to day.

SEPTEMBER 6.

We lay at Wrexham; a busy, extensive, and well built town. It has a very large and magnificent Church. It has a famous fair.

SEPTEMBER 7.

We came to Chirk Castle.

SEPTEMBER 8, THURSDAY.

We came to the house of Dr. Worthington, at Llanrhaiadr. Our entertainment was poor, though his house was not bad. The situation is very pleasant, by the side of a small river, of which the bank rises high on the other side, shaded by gradual rows of trees. The gloom, the stream, and the silence, generate thoughtfulness.

1 See ante, iv. 421, for the inscription on an urn erected by Mr. Myddelton 'on the banks of a rivulet where Johnson delighted to stand and repeat verses.' On Sept. 18, 1777, Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale: —' Mr. *****'s erection of an urn looks like an intention to bury me alive; I would as willingly see my friend, however benevolent and hospitable, quietly inurned. Let him

think for the present of some more acceptable memorial.' Piozzi Letters, i. 371.

2 Johnson wrote on Oct. 24, 1778: 'My two clerical friends Darby and Worthington have both died this month. I have known Worthington long, and to die is dreadful. I believe he was a very good man.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 26.

trees.

454

Mr. Gwynn the architect.

[1774.

The town is old, and very mean, but has, I think, a market. In this house, the Welsh translation of the Old Testament was made. The Welsh singing Psalms were written by Archdeacon Price. They are not considered as elegant, but as very literal, and accurate.

We came to Llanrhaiadr, through Oswestry; a town not very little, nor very mean. The church, which I saw only at a distance, seems to be an edifice much too good for the present state of the place.

SEPTEMBER 9.

We visited the waterfall, which is very high, and in rainy weather very copious. There is a reservoir made to supply it. In its fall, it has perforated a rock. There is a room built for entertainment. There was some difficulty in climbing to a near view. Lord Lyttelton came near it, and turned back.

I

When we came back, we took some cold meat, and notwithstanding the Doctor's importunities, went that day to Shrewsbury.

SEPTEMBER 10.

I sent for Gwynn 2, and he shewed us the town.

The walls are

broken, and narrower than those of Chester. The town is large,

:

2 Mr. Gwynn the architect was a native of Shrewsbury, and was at this time completing a bridge across the Severn, called the English Bridge besides this bridge, he built one at Acham, over the Severn, near to Shrewsbury; and the bridges at Worcester, Oxford [Magdalen Bridge], and Henley. DUPPA. He was also the architect of the Oxford Market, which was opened in 1774. Oxford during the Last Century, ed. 1859, p. 45. Johnson and Boswell travelled to Oxford with him in March, 1776. Ante, ii. 438. In 1778 he got into some difficulties, in which Johnson tried to help him, as is shewn by the following autograph letter in the possession of my friend Mr. M. M. Holloway :

'SIR,

'Poor Mr. Gwyn is in great distress under the weight of the late determination against him, and has still hopes that some mitigation may be obtained. If it be true that whatever has by his negligence been amiss, may be redressed for a sum much less than has been awarded, the remaining part ought in equity to be returned, or, what is more desirable, abated. When the money is once paid, there is little hope of getting it again.

'The load is, I believe, very hard upon him; he indulges some flattering opinions that by the influence of his academical friends it may be lightened, and will not be persuaded but that some testimony of my kindness may be beneficial. I hope he has been guilty of nothing worse broken,

1774.]

The Quarry walk at Shrewsbury.

455

I

and has many gentlemen's houses, but the streets are narrow. saw Taylor's library. We walked in the Quarry; a very

pleasant walk by the river. Our inn was not bad.

SEPTEMBER II.

Sunday. We were at St. Chads, a very large and luminous Church. We were on the Castle Hill.

SEPTEMBER 12.

We called on Dr. Adams2, and travelled towards Worcester, through Wenlock; a very mean place, though a borough. At noon, we came to Bridgenorth, and walked about the town, of which one part stands on a high rock; and part very low, by the river. There is an old tower, which, being crooked, leans so much, that it is frightful to pass by it.

In the afternoon we came through Kinver, a town in Staffordshire; neat and closely built. I believe it has only one street.

The road was so steep and miry, that we were forced to stop at Hartlebury, where we had a very neat inn, though it made a very poor appearance.

SEPTEMBER 13.

We came to Lord Sandys's, at Ombersley, where we were treated with great civility3.

The house is large. The hall is a very noble room.

456

Hagley.

SEPTEMBER 15.

[1774.

We went to Worcester, a very splendid city. The Cathedral is very noble, with many remarkable monuments. The library is in the Chapter House. On the table lay the Nuremberg Chronicle, I think, of the first edition. We went to the china warehouse.

The Cathedral has a cloister. The long aisle is, in my opinion, neither so wide nor so high as that of Lichfield.

SEPTEMBER 16.

We went to Hagley, where we were disappointed of the respect and kindness that we expected'.

SEPTEMBER 17.

We saw the house and park, which equalled my expectation. The house is one square mass. The offices are below. The rooms of elegance on the first floor, with two stories of bedchambers, very well disposed above it. The bedchambers have low windows, which abates the dignity of the house.

The park has one artificial ruin 2, and wants water; there is, however, one temporary cascade. From the farthest hill there is a very wide prospect.

us fine fruit; I wished you my pear yesterday; but then what would one pear have done for you?' Piozzi Letters, ii. 36. It seems unlikely that Johnson should not at Streatham have had all the wall-fruit that he wished.

This visit was not to Lord Lyttelton, but to his uncle [afterwards by successive creations, Lord Westcote, and Lord Lyttelton], the father of the present Lord Lyttelton, who lived at a house called Little Hagley. DUPPA. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale in 1771-'I would have been glad to go to Hagley in compliance with Mr. Lyttelton's kind invitation, for beside the pleasure of his conversation I should have had the opportunity of recollecting

past times, and wandering per montes notos et flumina nota, of recalling the images of sixteen, and reviewing my conversations with poor Ford.' Piozzi Letters, i. 42. He had been at school at Stourbridge, close by Hagley. Ante, i. 49. See Walpole's Letters, ix. 123, for an anecdote of Lord Westcote.

2 Horace Walpole, writing of Hagley in Sept. 1753 (Letters, ii. 352), says:-There is extreme taste in the park the seats are not the best, but there is not one absurdity. There is a ruined castle, built by Miller, that would get him his freedom even of Strawberry [Walpole's own house at Twickenham]: it has the true rust of the Barons' Wars.'

SEPTEMBER 18.

1774.]

Shenstone.

SEPTEMBER 18.

457

I went to church. The church is, externally, very mean, and is therefore diligently hidden by a plantation. There are in it several modern monuments of the Lytteltons.

There dined with us, Lord Dudley, and Sir Edward Lyttelton, of Staffordshire, and his Lady. They were all persons of agreeable conversation.

I found time to reflect on my birth-day, and offered a prayer, which I hope was heard.

SEPTEMBER 19.

We made haste away from a place, where all were offended'. In the way we visited the Leasowes. It was rain, yet we visited all the waterfalls. There are, in one place, fourteen falls in a short line. It is the next place to Ilam Gardens3. Poor Shenstone never tasted his pension. It is not very well proved that any pension was obtained for him. I am afraid that he died of misery1.

''Mrs. Lyttelton forced me to play at whist against my liking, and her husband took away Johnson's candle that he wanted to read by at the other end of the room. Those, I trust, were the offences.' Piozzi MS. CROKER.

Johnson (Works, viii. 409) thus writes of Shenstone and the Leasowes: He began to point his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his walks, and to wind his waters; which he did with such judgment and such fancy as made his little domain the envy of the great and the admiration of the skilful; a place to be visited by travellers and copied by designers. . . . . For awhile the inhabitants of Hagley affected to tell their acquaintance of the little fellow that was trying to make himself admired; but when by degrees the Leasowes forced themselves into notice, they took care to defeat the curiosity which they could not suppress by conducting their visitants perversely

to inconvenient points of view, and introducing them at the wrong end of a walk to detect a deception; injuries of which Shenstone would heavily complain. Where there is emulation there will be vanity; and where there is vanity there will be folly. The pleasure of Shenstone was all in his eye: he valued what he valued merely for its looks; nothing raised his indignation more than to ask if there were any fishes in his water.' See ante, p. 345.

3 See ante, iii. 187, and v. 429.

4

'He spent his estate in adorning it, and his death was probably hastened by his anxieties. He was a lamp that spent its oil in blazing. It is said that if he had lived a little longer he would have been assisted by a pension: such bounty could not have been ever more properly bestowed.' Johnson's Works, viii. 410. His friend, Mr. Graves, the author of The Spiritual Quixote, in a note on this passage says that, if he was sometimes distressed for

We