Boswell's Life of Johnson
the other. Though the proposition illustrated by both these works was
the same, namely, that in our present state there is more evil than
good, the intention of the writers was very different. Voltaire, I am
afraid, meant only by wanton profaneness to obtain a sportive victory
over religion, and to discredit the belief of a superintending
Providence; Johnson meant, by shewing the unsatisfactory nature of
things temporal, to direct the hopes of man to things eternal. Rasselas,
as was observed to me by a very accomplished lady, may be considered as
a more enlarged and more deeply philosophical discourse in prose, upon
the interesting truth, which in his Vanity of Human Wishes he had so
successfully enforced in verse.
I would ascribe to this year the following letter to a son of one of his
early friends at Lichfield, Mr. Joseph Simpson, Barrister, and authour
of a tract entitled Reflections on the Study of the Law.
'TO JOSEPH SIMPSON, ESQ.
'DEAR SIR,--Your father's inexorability not only grieves but amazes me:
he is your father; he was always accounted a wise man; nor do I remember
any thing to the disadvantage of his good-nature; but in his refusal to
assist you there is neither good-nature, fatherhood, nor wisdom. It is
the practice of good-nature to overlook faults which have already, by
the consequences, punished the delinquent. It is natural for a father to
think more favourably than others of his children; and it is always wise
to give assistance while a little help will prevent the necessity of
greater.
'If you married imprudently, you miscarried at your own hazard, at an
age when you had a right of choice. It would be hard if the man might
not choose his own wife, who has a right to plead before the Judges of
his country.
'If your imprudence has ended in difficulties and inconveniences, you
are yourself to support them; and, with the help of a little better
health, you would support them and conquer them. Surely, that want which
accident and sickness produces, is to be supported in every region of
humanity, though there were neither friends nor fathers in the world.
You have certainly from your father the highest claim of charity, though
none of right; and therefore I would counsel you to omit no decent nor
manly degree of importunity. Your debts in the whole are not large, and
of the whole but a small part is troublesome. Small debts are like
small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped
without a wound: great debts are like cannon; of loud noise, but little
danger. You must, therefore, be enabled to discharge petty debts, that
you may have leisure, with security to struggle with the rest. Neither
the great nor little debts disgrace you. I am sure you have my esteem
for the courage with which you contracted them, and the spirit with
which you endure them. I wish my esteem could be of more use. I have
been invited, or have invited myself, to several parts of the kingdom;
and will not incommode my dear Lucy by coming to Lichfield, while her
present lodging is of any use to her. I hope, in a few days, to be
at leisure, and to make visits. Whither I shall fly is matter of no
importance. A man unconnected is at home every where; unless he may be
said to be at home no where. I am sorry, dear Sir, that where you have
parents, a man of your merits should not have an home. I wish I could
give it you. I am, my dear Sir, affectionately yours,
'SAM. JOHNSON.'
He now refreshed himself by an excursion to Oxford, of which the
following short characteristical notice, in his own words, is preserved
'* * * is now making tea for me. I have been in my gown ever since I
came here. It was, at my first coming, quite new and handsome. I have
swum thrice, which I had disused for many years. I have proposed to
Vansittart, climbing over the wall, but he has refused me. And I have
clapped my hands till they are sore, at Dr. King's speech.'
His negro servant, Francis Barber, having left him, and been some time
at sea, not pressed as has been supposed, but with his own consent, it
appears from a letter to John Wilkes, Esq., from Dr. Smollet, that his
master kindly interested himself in procuring his release from a state
of life of which Johnson always expressed the utmost abhorrence. He
said, 'No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself
into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance
of being drowned.' And at another time, 'A man in a jail has more room,
better food, and commonly better company.' The letter was as follows:--
'Chelsea, March 16, 1759.
'DEAR SIR, I am again your petitioner, in behalf of that great CHAM of
literature, Samuel Johnson. His black servant, whose name is Francis
Barber, has been pressed on board the Stag Frigate, Captain Angel, and
our lexicographer is in great distress. He says the boy is a sickly lad,
of a delicate frame, and particularly subject to a malady in his throat,
which renders him very unfit for his Majesty's service. You know what
manner of animosity the said Johnson has against you; and I dare say
you desire no other opportunity of resenting it than that of laying him
under an obligation. He was humble enough to desire my assistance on
this occasion, though he and I were never cater-cousins; and I gave him
to understand that I would make application to my friend Mr. Wilkes,
who, perhaps, by his interest with Dr. Hay and Mr. Elliot, might be able
to procure the discharge of his lacquey. It would be superfluous to
say more on the subject, which I leave to your own consideration; but I
cannot let slip this opportunity of declaring that I am, with the most
inviolable esteem and attachment, dear Sir, your affectionate, obliged,
humble servant,
'T. SMOLLET.'
Mr. Wilkes, who upon all occasions has acted, as a private gentleman,
with most polite liberality, applied to his friend Sir George Hay, then
one of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty; and Francis Barber was
discharged, as he has told me, without any wish of his own. He found his
old master in Chambers in the Inner Temple, and returned to his service.
1760: AETAT. 51.]--I take this opportunity to relate the manner in which
an acquaintance first commenced between Dr. Johnson and Mr. Murphy.
During the publication of The Gray's-Inn Journal, a periodical paper
which was successfully carried on by Mr. Murphy alone, when a very
young man, he happened to be in the country with Mr. Foote; and having
mentioned that he was obliged to go to London in order to get ready for
the press one of the numbers of that Journal, Foote said to him, 'You
need not go on that account. Here is a French magazine, in which you
will find a very pretty oriental tale; translate that, and send it to
your printer.' Mr. Murphy having read the tale, was highly pleased with
it, and followed Foote's advice. When he returned to town, this tale was
pointed out to him in The Rambler, from whence it had been translated
into the French magazine. Mr. Murphy then waited upon Johnson,
to explain this curious incident. His talents, literature, and
gentleman-like manners, were soon perceived by Johnson, and a friendship
was formed which was never broken.
1762: AETAT. 53.]--A lady having at this time solicited him to obtain
the Archbishop of Canterbury's patronage to have her son sent to the
University, one of those solicitations which are too frequent, where
people, anxious for a particular object, do not consider propriety, or
the opportunity which the persons whom they solicit have to assist them,
he wrote to her the following answer, with a copy of which I am favoured
by the Reverend Dr. Farmer, Master of Emanuel College, Cambridge.
'MADAM,--I hope you will believe that my delay in answering your letter
could proceed only from my unwillingness to destroy any hope that you
had formed. Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the
chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures
immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and
expectations improperly indulged, must end in disappointment. If it
be asked, what is the improper expectation which it is dangerous to
indulge, experience will quickly answer, that it is such expectation as
is dictated not by reason, but by desire; expectation raised, not by
the common occurrences of life, but by the wants of the expectant; an
expectation that requires the common course of things to be changed, and
the general rules of action to be broken.
'When you made your request to me, you should have considered, Madam,
what you were asking. You ask me to solicit a great man, to whom I never
spoke, for a young person whom I had never seen, upon a supposition
which I had no means of knowing to be true. There is no reason why,
amongst all the great, I should chuse to supplicate the Archbishop, nor
why, among all the possible objects of his bounty, the Archbishop should
chuse your son. I know, Madam, how unwillingly conviction is admitted,
when interest opposes it; but surely, Madam, you must allow, that there
is no reason why that should be done by me, which every other man may
do with equal reason, and which, indeed no man can do properly, without
some very particular relation both to the Archbishop and to you. If I
could help you in this exigence by any proper means, it would give me
pleasure; but this proposal is so very remote from all usual methods,
that I cannot comply with it, but at the risk of such answer and
suspicions as I believe you do not wish me to undergo.
'I have seen your son this morning; he seems a pretty youth, and will,
perhaps, find some better friend than I can procure him; but, though he
should at last miss the University, he may still be wise, useful, and
happy. I am, Madam, your most humble servant,
'June 8, 1762.'
'SAM. JOHNSON.'
'TO MR. JOSEPH BARETTI, AT MILAN.
'London, July 20, 1762.
'SIR, However justly you may accuse me for want of punctuality in
correspondence, I am not so far lost in negligence as to omit the
opportunity of writing to you, which Mr. Beauclerk's passage through
Milan affords me.
'I suppose you received the Idlers, and I intend that you shall soon
receive Shakspeare, that you may explain his works to the ladies of
Italy, and tell them the story of the editor, among the other strange
narratives with which your long residence in this unknown region has
supplied you.
'As you have now been long away, I suppose your curiosity may pant for
some news of your old friends. Miss Williams and I live much as we did.
Miss Cotterel still continues to cling to Mrs. Porter, and Charlotte
is now big of the fourth child. Mr. Reynolds gets six thousands a year.
Levet is lately married, not without much suspicion that he has been
wretchedly cheated in his match. Mr. Chambers is gone this day, for the
first time, the circuit with the Judges. Mr. Richardson is dead of an
apoplexy, and his second daughter has married a merchant.
'My vanity, or my kindness, makes me flatter myself, that you would
rather hear of me than of those whom I have mentioned; but of myself
I have very little which I care to tell. Last winter I went down to my
native town, where I found the streets much narrower and shorter than
I thought I had left them, inhabited by a new race of people, to whom I
was very little known. My play-fellows were grown old, and forced me to
suspect that I was no longer young. My only remaining friend has changed
his principles, and was become the tool of the predominant faction. My
daughter-in-law, from whom I expected most, and whom I met with sincere
benevolence, has lost the beauty and gaiety of youth, without having
gained much of the wisdom of age. I wandered about for five days, and