Boswell's Life of Johnson
stranger. But as soon as Edwards had brought to his recollection their
having been at Pembroke-College together nine-and-forty years ago, he
seemed much pleased, asked where he lived, and said he should be glad to
see him in Bolt-court. EDWARDS. 'Ah, Sir! we are old men now.' JOHNSON.
(who never liked to think of being old,) 'Don't let us discourage one
another.' EDWARDS. 'Why, Doctor, you look stout and hearty, I am happy
to see you so; for the news-papers told us you were very ill.' JOHNSON.
'Ay, Sir, they are always telling lies of US OLD FELLOWS.'
Wishing to be present at more of so singular a conversation as that
between two fellow-collegians, who had lived forty years in London
without ever having chanced to meet, I whispered to Mr. Edwards that
Dr. Johnson was going home, and that he had better accompany him now.
So Edwards walked along with us, I eagerly assisting to keep up the
conversation. Mr. Edwards informed Dr. Johnson that he had practised
long as a solicitor in Chancery, but that he now lived in the
country upon a little farm, about sixty acres, just by Stevenage in
Hertfordshire, and that he came to London (to Barnard's Inn, No. 6),
generally twice a week. Johnson appearing to me in a reverie, Mr.
Edwards addressed himself to me, and expatiated on the pleasure of
living in the country. BOSWELL. 'I have no notion of this, Sir. What you
have to entertain you, is, I think, exhausted in half an hour.' EDWARDS.
'What? don't you love to have hope realized? I see my grass, and my
corn, and my trees growing. Now, for instance, I am curious to see if
this frost has not nipped my fruit-trees.' JOHNSON. (who we did not
imagine was attending,) 'You find, Sir, you have fears as well as
hopes.'--So well did he see the whole, when another saw but the half of
a subject.
When we got to Dr. Johnson's house, and were seated in his library, the
dialogue went on admirably. EDWARDS. 'Sir, I remember you would not let
us say PRODIGIOUS at College. For even then, Sir, (turning to me,)
he was delicate in language, and we all feared him.'* JOHNSON. (to
Edwards,) 'From your having practised the law long, Sir, I presume you
must be rich.' EDWARDS. 'No, Sir; I got a good deal of money; but I had
a number of poor relations to whom I gave a great part of it.' JOHNSON.
'Sir, you have been rich in the most valuable sense of the word.'
EDWARDS. 'But I shall not die rich.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, sure, Sir, it is
better to LIVE rich than to DIE rich.' EDWARDS. 'I wish I had continued
at College.' 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 Bloxam 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,"
and I told you of another fine line in Camden's Remains, an 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."'
* Johnson said to me afterwards, 'Sir, they respected me for
my literature: and yet it was not great but by comparison.
Sir, it is amazing how little literature there is in the
world.'--BOSWELL
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, faultering 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
hogs-heads, 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 inconvenience. 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.'
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 sixty-five.' JOHNSON. 'I shall
be sixty-eight next birth-day. Come, Sir, drink water, and put in for a
hundred.'
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. He observed, 'how wonderful it
was that they had both been in London forty years, without having ever
once met, and both walkers in the street too!' Mr. Edwards, when going
away, again recurred to his consciousness of senility, and looking full
in Johnson's face, said to him, 'You'll find in Dr. Young,
"O my coevals! remnants of yourselves."'
Johnson did not relish this at all; but shook his head with impatience.
Edwards walked off, seemingly highly pleased with the honour of having
been thus noticed by Dr. Johnson. When he was gone, I said to Johnson,
I thought him but a weak man. JOHNSON. 'Why, yes, Sir. Here is a man who
has passed through life without experience: yet I would rather have him
with me than a more sensible man who will not talk readily. This man is
always willing to say what he has to say.' Yet Dr. Johnson had himself
by no means that willingness which he praised so much, and I think so
justly; for who has not felt the painful effect of the dreary void, when
there is a total silence in a company, for any length of time; or, which
is as bad, or perhaps worse, when the conversation is with difficulty
kept up by a perpetual effort?
Johnson once observed to me, 'Tom Tyers described me the best: "Sir,
(said he,) you are like a ghost: you never speak till you are spoken
to."'
The gentleman whom he thus familiarly mentioned was Mr. Thomas Tyers,
son of Mr. Jonathan Tyers, the founder of that excellent place of
publick amusement, Vauxhall Gardens, which must ever be an estate to
its proprietor, as it is peculiarly adapted to the taste of the English
nation; there being a mixture of curious show,--gay exhibition, musick,
vocal and instrumental, not too refined for the general ear;--for all
which only a shilling is paid; and, though last, not least, good eating
and drinking for those who choose to purchase that regale. Mr. Thomas
Tyers was bred to the law; but having a handsome fortune, vivacity of
temper, and eccentricity of mind, he could not confine himself to the
regularity of practice. He therefore ran about the world with a pleasant
carelessness, amusing everybody by his desultory conversation. He
abounded in anecdote, but was not sufficiently attentive to accuracy. I
therefore cannot venture to avail myself much of a biographical sketch
of Johnson which he published, being one among the various persons
ambitious of appending their names to that of my illustrious friend.
That sketch is, however, an entertaining little collection of fragments.
Those which he published of Pope and Addison are of higher merit; but
his fame must chiefly rest upon his Political Conferences, in which he
introduces several eminent persons delivering their sentiments in the
way of dialogue, and discovers a considerable share of learning, various
knowledge, and discernment of character. This much may I be allowed to
say of a man who was exceedingly obliging to me, and who lived with
Dr. Johnson in as easy a manner as almost any of his very numerous
acquaintance.
Mr. Edwards had said to me aside, that Dr. Johnson should have been of
a profession. I repeated the remark to Johnson that I might have his own
thoughts on the subject. JOHNSON. 'Sir, it WOULD have been better that I
had been of a profession. I ought to have been a lawyer.' BOSWELL. 'I
do not think, Sir, it would have been better, for we should not have
had the English Dictionary.' JOHNSON. 'But you would have had Reports.'
BOSWELL. 'Ay; but there would not have been another, who could have
written the Dictionary. There have been many very good Judges. Suppose
you had been Lord Chancellor; you would have delivered opinions with
more extent of mind, and in a more ornamented manner, than perhaps any
Chancellor ever did, or ever will do. But, I believe, causes have been
as judiciously decided as you could have done.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir.
Property has been as well settled.'
Johnson, however, had a noble ambition floating in his mind, and had,
undoubtedly, often speculated on the possibility of his supereminent
powers being rewarded in this great and liberal country by the highest
honours of the state. Sir William Scott informs me, that upon the death
of the late Lord Lichfield, who was Chancellor of the University of
Oxford, he said to Johnson, 'What a pity it is, Sir, that you did not
follow the profession of the law. You might have been Lord Chancellor of
Great Britain, and attained to the dignity of the peerage; and now that
the title of Lichfleld, your native city, is extinct, you might have had
it.' Johnson, upon this, seemed much agitated; and, in an angry tone,
exclaimed, 'Why will you vex me by suggesting this, when it is too
late?'
But he did not repine at the prosperity of others. The late Dr. Thomas
Leland, told Mr. Courtenay, that when Mr. Edmund Burke shewed Johnson
his fine house and lands near Beaconsfield, Johnson coolly said, 'Non
equidem invideo; miror magis.'*
* I am not entirely without suspicion that Johnson may have
felt a little momentary envy; for no man loved the good
things of this life better than he did and he could not but
be conscious that he deserved a much larger share of them,
than he ever had.--BOSWELL.
Yet no man had a higher notion of the dignity of literature than
Johnson, or was more determined in maintaining the respect which he