Boswell's Life of Johnson
reputation of his friend, he suggested and took the charge of an edition
of those Essays at Edinburgh, which followed progressively the London
publication.
This year he wrote to the same gentleman upon a mournful occasion.
'To MR. JAMES ELPHINSTON.
September 25, 1750.
'DEAR SIR, You have, as I find by every kind of evidence, lost an
excellent mother; and I hope you will not think me incapable of
partaking of your grief. I have a mother, now eighty-two years of age,
whom, therefore, I must soon lose, unless it please GOD that she
rather should mourn for me. I read the letters in which you relate your
mother's death to Mrs. Strahan, and think I do myself honour, when I
tell you that I read them with tears; but tears are neither to YOU nor
to ME of any further use, when once the tribute of nature has been paid.
The business of life summons us away from useless grief, and calls us to
the exercise of those virtues of which we are lamenting our deprivation.
The greatest benefit which one friend can confer upon another, is to
guard, and excite, and elevate his virtues. This your mother will still
perform, if you diligently preserve the memory of her life, and of her
death: a life, so far as I can learn, useful, wise, and innocent; and
a death resigned, peaceful, and holy. I cannot forbear to mention, that
neither reason nor revelation denies you to hope, that you may increase
her happiness by obeying her precepts; and that she may, in her
present state, look with pleasure upon every act of virtue to which her
instructions or example have contributed. Whether this be more than a
pleasing dream, or a just opinion of separate spirits, is, indeed, of no
great importance to us, when we consider ourselves as acting under the
eye of GOD: yet, surely, there is something pleasing in the belief, that
our separation from those whom we love is merely corporeal; and it
may be a great incitement to virtuous friendship, if it can be made
probable, that that union that has received the divine approbation shall
continue to eternity.
'There is one expedient by which you may, in some degree, continue her
presence. If you write down minutely what you remember of her from your
earliest years, you will read it with great pleasure, and receive from
it many hints of soothing recollection, when time shall remove her yet
farther from you, and your grief shall be matured to veneration. To
this, however painful for the present, I cannot but advise you, as to a
source of comfort and satisfaction in the time to come; for all comfort
and all satisfaction is sincerely wished you by, dear Sir, your most
obliged, most obedient, and most humble servant,
'SAM. JOHNSON.'
The Rambler has increased in fame as in age. Soon after its first folio
edition was concluded, it was published in six duodecimo volumes; and
its authour lived to see ten numerous editions of it in London, beside
those of Ireland and Scotland.
The style of Johnson was, undoubtedly, much formed upon that of the
great writers in the last century, Hooker, Bacon, Sanderson, Hakewell,
and others; those 'GIANTS,' as they were well characterised by A GREAT
PERSONAGE, whose authority, were I to name him, would stamp a reverence
on the opinion.
Johnson assured me, that he had not taken upon him to add more than four
or five words to the English language, of his own formation; and he was
very much offended at the general licence, by no means 'modestly taken'
in his time not only to coin new words, but to use many words in senses
quite different from their established meaning, and those frequently
very fantastical.
Sir Thomas Brown, whose life Johnson wrote, was remarkably fond of
Anglo-Latin diction; and to his example we are to ascribe Johnson's
sometimes indulging himself in this kind of phraseology. Johnson's
comprehension of mind was the mould for his language. Had his
conceptions been narrower, his expression would have been easier. His
sentences have a dignified march; and, it is certain, that his example
has given a general elevation to the language of his country, for many
of our best writers have approached very near to him; and, from the
influence which he has had upon our composition, scarcely any thing
is written now that is not better expressed than was usual before he
appeared to lead the national taste.
Though The Rambler was not concluded till the year 1752, I shall,
under this year, say all that I have to observe upon it. Some of
the translations of the mottos by himself are admirably done. He
acknowledges to have received 'elegant translations' of many of them
from Mr. James Elphinston; and some are very happily translated by a Mr.
F. Lewis, of whom I never heard more, except that Johnson thus described
him to Mr. Malone: 'Sir, he lived in London, and hung loose upon
society.'
His just abhorrence of Milton's political notions was ever strong. But
this did not prevent his warm admiration of Milton's great poetical
merit, to which he has done illustrious justice, beyond all who have
written upon the subject. And this year he not only wrote a Prologue,
which was spoken by Mr. Garrick before the acting of Comus at Drury-lane
theatre, for the benefit of Milton's grand-daughter, but took a very
zealous interest in the success of the charity.
1751: AETAT. 42.]--In 1751 we are to consider him as carrying on both
his Dictionary and Rambler.
Though Johnson's circumstances were at this time far from being easy,
his humane and charitable disposition was constantly exerting itself.
Mrs. Anna Williams, daughter of a very ingenious Welsh physician, and
a woman of more than ordinary talents and literature, having come to
London in hopes of being cured of a cataract in both her eyes, which
afterwards ended in total blindness, was kindly received as a constant
visitor at his house while Mrs. Johnson lived; and after her death,
having come under his roof in order to have an operation upon her
eyes performed with more comfort to her than in lodgings, she had an
apartment from him during the rest of her life, at all times when he had
a house.
1752: AETAT. 43.]--In 1752 he was almost entirely occupied with his
Dictionary. The last paper of his Rambler was published March 2, this
year; after which, there was a cessation for some time of any exertion
of his talents as an essayist. But, in the same year, Dr. Hawkesworth,
who was his warm admirer, and a studious imitator of his style, and then
lived in great intimacy with him, began a periodical paper, entitled
The Adventurer, in connection with other gentlemen, one of whom was
Johnson's much-beloved friend, Dr. Bathurst; and, without doubt, they
received many valuable hints from his conversation, most of his friends
having been so assisted in the course of their works.
That there should be a suspension of his literary labours during a part
of the year 1752, will not seem strange, when it is considered that soon
after closing his Rambler, he suffered a loss which, there can be no
doubt, affected him with the deepest distress. For on the 17th of March,
O.S., his wife died.
The following very solemn and affecting prayer was found after Dr.
Johnson's decease, by his servant, Mr. Francis Barber, who delivered it
to my worthy friend the Reverend Mr. Strahan, Vicar of Islington, who at
my earnest request has obligingly favoured me with a copy of it, which
he and I compared with the original:
'April 26, 1752, being after 12 at Night of the 25th.
'O Lord! Governour of heaven and earth, in whose hands are embodied
and departed Spirits, if thou hast ordained the Souls of the Dead to
minister to the Living, and appointed my departed Wife to have care
of me, grant that I may enjoy the good effects of her attention and
ministration, whether exercised by appearance, impulses, dreams or in
any other manner agreeable to thy Government. Forgive my presumption,
enlighten my ignorance, and however meaner agents are employed, grant
me the blessed influences of thy holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ our
Lord. Amen.'
That his love for his wife was of the most ardent kind, and, during
the long period of fifty years, was unimpaired by the lapse of time,
is evident from various passages in the series of his Prayers and
Meditations, published by the Reverend Mr. Strahan, as well as from
other memorials, two of which I select, as strongly marking the
tenderness and sensibility of his mind.
'March 28, 1753. I kept this day as the anniversary of my Tetty's death,
with prayer and tears in the morning. In the evening I prayed for her
conditionally, if it were lawful.'
'April 23, 1753. I know not whether I do not too much indulge the vain
longings of affection; but I hope they intenerate my heart, and that
when I die like my Tetty, this affection will be acknowledged in a happy
interview, and that in the mean time I am incited by it to piety. I
will, however, not deviate too much from common and received methods of
devotion.'
Her wedding ring, when she became his wife, was, after her death,
preserved by him, as long as he lived, with an affectionate care, in
a little round wooden box, in the inside of which he pasted a slip of
paper, thus inscribed by him in fair characters, as follows:
'Eheu!
Eliz. Johnson
Nupta Jul. 9 1736,
Mortua, eheu!
Mart. 17 1752.'
After his death, Mr. Francis Barber, his faithful servant and residuary
legatee, offered this memorial of tenderness to Mrs. Lucy Porter, Mrs.
Johnson's daughter; but she having declined to accept of it, he had it
enamelled as a mourning ring for his old master, and presented it to his
wife, Mrs. Barber, who now has it.
I have, indeed, been told by Mrs. Desmoulins, who, before her marriage,
lived for some time with Mrs. Johnson at Hampstead, that she indulged
herself in country air and nice living, at an unsuitable expense, while
her husband was drudging in the smoke of London, and that she by no
means treated him with that complacency which is the most engaging
quality in a wife. But all this is perfectly compatible with his
fondness for her, especially when it is remembered that he had a high
opinion of her understanding, and that the impressions which her beauty,
real or imaginary, had originally made upon his fancy, being continued
by habit, had not been effaced, though she herself was doubtless much
altered for the worse. The dreadful shock of separation took place in
the night; and he immediately dispatched a letter to his friend, the
Reverend Dr. Taylor, which, as Taylor told me, expressed grief in the
strongest manner he had ever read; so that it is much to be regretted
it has not been preserved. The letter was brought to Dr. Taylor, at his
house in the Cloisters, Westminster, about three in the morning; and
as it signified an earnest desire to see him, he got up, and went to
Johnson as soon as he was dressed, and found him in tears and in extreme
agitation. After being a little while together, Johnson requested him
to join with him in prayer. He then prayed extempore, as did Dr. Taylor;
and thus, by means of that piety which was ever his primary object, his
troubled mind was, in some degree, soothed and composed.
The next day he wrote as follows:
'To THE REVEREND DR. TAYLOR.
'DEAR SIR,--Let me have your company and instruction. Do not live away
from me. My distress is great.
'Pray desire Mrs. Taylor to inform me what mourning I should buy for my
mother and Miss Porter, and bring a note in writing with you.
'Remember me in your prayers, for vain is the help of man. I am, dear
Sir, &c.
'March 18, 1752.'
'SAM. JOHNSON.'
That his sufferings upon the death of his wife were severe, beyond what
are commonly endured, I have no doubt, from the information of many