Slike strani
PDF
ePub
[graphic][merged small]

an interview, he spoke of the way in which he had been received with evident pride and pleasure. "I find it does a man good," he said, "to be talked to by his sovereign." The King asked if he was writing anything, and on his replying that he had done his part as a writer, "I should have thought so too," said the King, "if you had not written so well." "No man," said Johnson, "could have paid a higher compliment." And when asked if he had replied, he added, "No, sir, when the King had said it, it was to be, it was not for me to bandy civilities with my Sovereign."

The most significant event of Johnson's life, though it seemed trivial enough at the time, occurred on the 16th of May, 1763, when Boswell, a young Scottish law student, first met in a bookseller's back parlour the great man whom he was destined to immortalize. "Mr. Davies," Boswell writes, "mentioned my name, and respectfully introduced me to him. I was much agitated, and recollecting his prejudice against the Scotch, of which I had heard much, I said to Davies, 'don't tell where I come from.' 'From Scotland,' cried Davies roguishly. 'Mr. Johnson,' said I, 'I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it!'... This speech was somewhat unlucky, for with that quickness of wit for which he was so remarkable, he seized the expression 'come from Scotland,' which I used in the sense of being of that country, and as if I had said that I had come away from it or left it, retorted, 'That, Sir, I find is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help!" Another not illmerited repulse shortly afterwards would have silenced most men, but Boswell had the invincible courage of a hero-worshipper, and even ventured before many days had passed to "beard the Giant in his den." "He received me very courteously; but, it must be confessed, that his apartment, and furniture, and morning dress, were sufficiently uncouth. His brown suit of clothes looked very rusty; he had on a little old shrivelled unpowdered wig, which was too small for his head; his shirt-neck and knees of his breeches were loose; his black worsted stockings ill-drawn up; and he had a pair of unbuckled shoes by way of slippers. But all these slovenly particularities were forgotten the moment that he began to talk."

Careless and indifferent to appearances as Johnson was, he neither despised money nor dress, and was aware that a man with a good coat on his back meets with a better reception than he who has a bad one. "In civilized society," he said, "personal merit will not serve you so much as money will; sir, you may make the experiment. Go into the street and give one man a lecture on morality and another a shilling, and see which will respect you most."

The friendship between the philosopher and his eager disciple grew rapidly: "Come to me as often as you can," he said, "and I shall be glad to see you." A supper at the Mitre, and a couple of bottles of port cemented the strange friendship. "Sir," said Johnson, "I love the young dogs of this age." That night at the Mitre was quickly followed by another; and when Boswell complained to a friend that drinking port and sitting up late affected his nerves, the answer was, "One had better be palsied at eighteen than not keep company with such a man." And later on Johnson was heard to say, "If I were to lose Boswell it would be a limb amputated."

In 1749, while engaged on the Dictionary, Johnson had started a small Club for literary discussion, in Ivy Lane, Paternoster Row; but it was not until 1764 that the famous Club was founded which afterwards became known as the Literary Club. The original members, nine in number, met at the Turk's Head, Gerard Street, Soho; and there, with men like Burke, Goldsmith, Reynolds, and at a later period, Garrick, as his co-mates, Johnson discovered, if indeed he had not known it before, that "a tavern chair was the throne of human felicity." One of the original members was Sir John Hawkins, "a very unclubable man," who lived to write a pretentious biography, which Boswell was destined to extinguish.

The Club and its members has been thus happily described by Lord Macaulay: "Goldsmith was the representative of poetry and light literature, Reynolds of the arts, Burke of political eloquence and political philosophy. There, too, were Gibbon, the greatest historian, and Jones the greatest linguist of the age. Garrick brought to the meetings his inexhaustible pleasantry, his incomparable mimicry, and his consummate know

« PrejšnjaNaprej »