JOHNSON: 'Why do you wish that, sir?' EDWARDS: 'Because I think I should have had a much easier life than mine has been. I should have been a parson and had a good living like Bloxham and several others, and lived comfortably.' JOHNSON: 'Sir, the life of a parson, of a conscientious clergyman, is not easy. I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain. I would rather have Chancery suits upon my hands than the cure of souls. No, sir, I do not envy a clergyman's life as an easy life, nor do I envy the clergyman who makes it an easy life.' Here taking himself up all of a sudden, he exclaimed, 'O! Mr. Edwards! I'll convince you that I recollect you. Do you remember our drinking together at an alehouse near Pembroke Gate? At that time, you told me of the Eton boy, who, when verses on our Saviour's turning water into wine were prescribed as an exercise, brought up a single line, which was highly admired: "Vidit et erubuit lympha pudica Deum."1 And I told you of another fine line in Camden's 1 [This line has frequently been attributed to Dryden, when a King's Scholar at Westminster. But neither Eton nor Westminster have in truth any claim to it, the line being borrowed, with a slight change (as Mr. Bindley has observed to me), from an epigram by Crashaw, which was published in his Epigrammata Sacra, first printed at Cambridge without the author's name, in 1634, 8vo. The original is much more elegant than the copy, the water being personified, and the word on which the point of the epigram turns, being reserved to the close of the line: 'JOANN. ii.-Aquæ in vinum versæ. 'Unde rubor vestris et non sua purpura lymphls? Remains, a eulogy upon one of our kings, who was succeeded by his son, a prince of equal merit: ""Mira cano, Sol occubuit, nox nulla secuta est.' EDWARDS: 'You are a philosopher, Dr. Johnson. I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but I don't know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in.' Mr. Burke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Courtenay, Mr. Malone, and, indeed, all the eminent men to whom I have mentioned this, have thought it an exquisite trait of character. The truth is, that philosophy, like religion, is too generally supposed to be hard and severe, at least so grave as to exclude all gaiety. EDWARDS: 'I have been twice married, Doctor. You, I suppose, have never known what it was to have a wife.' JOHNSON: 'Sir, I have known what it was to have a wife, and (in a solemn, tender, faltering tone) I have known what it was to lose a wife. It had almost broke my heart.' EDWARDS: How do you live, sir? For my part, I must have my regular meals, and a glass of good wine. I find I require it.' JOHNSON: 'I now drink no wine, sir. Early in life I drank wine: for many years I drank none. I then for some years drank a great deal.' EDWARDS: Some hogsheads, I warrant you.' JOHNSON: I then had a severe illness, and left it off, and I have never begun it again. I never felt any difference upon myself from eating one thing rather than another, nor from one kind of weather rather than another. There are people, I believe, who feel a difference; but I am not one of them. And as to regular meals, I have fasted from the Sunday's dinner to the Tuesday's dinner without any incon venience. I believe it is best to eat just as one is hungry; but a man who is in business, or a man who has a family, must have stated meals. I am a straggler. I may leave this town and go to Grand Cairo, without being missed here or observed there.' EDWARDS: 'Don't you eat supper, sir?' JOHNSON: "No, sir.' EDWARDS: For my part, now, I consider supper as a turnpike through which one must pass in order to get to bed.'1 JOHNSON: 'You are a lawyer, Mr. Edwards. Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with. They have what he wants.' EDWARDS: 'I am grown old: I am sixtyfive.' JOHNSON: 'I shall be sixty-nine next birthday. Come, sir, drink water, and put in for a hundred.' Mr. Edwards mentioned a gentleman who had left his whole fortune to Pembroke College. JOHNSON : 'Whether to leave one's whole fortune to a college be right, must depend upon circumstances. I would leave the interest of a fortune I bequeathed to a college to my relations or my friends for their lives. It is the same thing to a college, which is a permanent society, whether it gets the money now or twenty years hence; and I would wish to make my relations or friends feel the benefit of it.' This interview confirmed my opinion of Johnson's most humane and benevolent heart. His cordial and placid behaviour to an old fellow-collegian, a man so different from himself; and his telling him that he would go down to his farm and visit him, showed a kindness of disposition very rare at an advanced age, 1 I am not absolutely sure but this was my own suggestion, though it is truly in the character of Edwards. |