Life of Johnson, Volume 4 · Chapter 38Footnotes: (6)
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[428] 'Sept. 14, 1781. Dr. Johnson has been very unwell indeed. Once I was quite frightened about him; but he continues his strange discipline—starving, mercury, opium; and though for a time half demolished by its severity, he always in the end rises superior both to the disease and the remedy, which commonly is the most alarming of the two.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 107. On Sept. 18, his birthday, he wrote:—'As I came home [from church], I thought I had never begun any period of life so placidly. I have always been accustomed to let this day pass unnoticed, but it came this time into my mind that some little festivity was not improper. I had a dinner, and invited Allen and Levett.' Pr. and Med. p. 199.
[429] This remark, I have no doubt, is aimed at Hawkins, who (Life, p. 553) pretends to account for this trip.
[430] Pr. and Med. p. 201. BOSWELL.
[431] He wrote from Lichfield on the previous Oct. 27:—'All here is gloomy; a faint struggle with the tediousness of time; a doleful confession of present misery, and the approach seen and felt of what is most dreaded and most shunned. But such is the lot of man.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 209.
[432] The truth of this has been proved by sad experience. BOSWELL. Mrs. Boswell died June 4, 1789. MALONE.
[433] See account of him in the Gent. Mag. Feb. 1785. BOSWELL, see ante, i. 243, note 3.
[434] Mrs. Piozzi (Synonymy, ii. 79), quoting this verse, under Officious, says;—'Johnson, always thinking neglect the worst misfortune that could befall a man, looked on a character of this description with less aversion than I do.'
[435]
Addisons Cato, act. iv. sc. 4.
[436] In both editions of Sir John Hawkins's Life of Dr. Johnson, 'letter'd ignorance' is printed. BOSWELL. Mr. Croker (Boswell, p. I) says that 'Mr. Boswell is habitually unjust to Sir J. Hawkins.' As some kind of balance, I suppose, to this injustice, he suppresses this note.
[437] Johnson repeated this line to me thus:—
But he afterwards altered it to the present reading. BOSWELL. This poem is printed in the Ann. Reg. for 1783, p. 189, with the following variations:—l. 18, for 'ready help' 'useful care': l. 28, 'His single talent,' 'The single talent'; l. 33, 'no throbs of fiery pain,' 'no throbbing fiery pain'; l. 36, 'and freed,' 'and forced.' On the next page it is printed John Gilpin.
[438] Mr. Croker says that this line shows that 'some of Gray's happy expressions lingered in Johnson's memory' He quotes a line that comes at the end of the Ode on Vicissitude—'From busy day, the peaceful night.' This line is not Gray's, but Mason's.
[439] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Aug. 14, 1780:—'If you want events, Here is Mr. Levett just come in at fourscore from a walk to Hampstead, eight miles, in August.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 177.
[440] In the original, March 20. On the afternoon of March 20 Lord North announced in the House of Commons 'that his Majesty's Ministers were no more.' Parl. Hist. xxii. 1215.
[441] Pr. and Med. p. 209 [207]. BOSWELL.
[442] See ante, ii. 355, iii. 46, iv. 81, 100. Mr. Seward records in his Biographiana, p. 600—without however giving the year—that 'Johnson being asked what the Opposition meant by their flaming speeches and violent pamphlets against Lord North's administration, answered: "They mean, Sir, rebellion; they mean in spite to destroy that country which they are not permitted to govern."'
[443] In the previous December the City of London in an address, writes Horace Walpole, 'besought the King to remove both his public and private counsellors, and used these stunning and memorable words:—"Your armies are captured; the wonted superiority of your navies is annihilated, your dominions are lost." Words that could be used to no other King; no King had ever lost so much without losing all. If James II. lost his crown, yet the crown lost no dominions.' Journal of the Reign of George III, ii. 483. The address is given in the Ann. Reg. xxiv. 320. On Aug. 4 of this year Johnson wrote to Dr. Taylor:—'Perhaps no nation not absolutely conquered has declined so much in so short a time. We seem to be sinking. Suppose the Irish, having already gotten a free trade and an independent Parliament, should say we will have a King and ally ourselves with the House of Bourbon, what could be done to hinder or overthrow them?' Mr. Morrison's Autographs, vol. ii.
[444] In February and March, 1771, the House of Commons ordered eight printers to attend at the bar on a charge of breach of privilege, in publishing reports of debates. One of the eight, Miller of the Evening Post, when the messenger of the House tried to arrest him, gave the man himself into custody on a charge of assault. The messenger was brought before Lord Mayor Crosby and Aldermen Wilkes and Oliver, and a warrant was made out for his commitment. Bail was thereupon offered and accepted for his appearance at the next sessions. The Lord Mayor and Oliver were sent to the Tower by the House. Wilkes was ordered to appear on April 8; but the Ministry, not daring to face his appearance, adjourned the House till the 9th. A committee was appointed by ballot to inquire into the late obstructions to the execution of the orders of the House. It recommended the consideration of the expediency of the House ordering that Miller should be taken into custody. The report, when read, was received with a roar of laughter. Nothing was done. Such was, to quote the words of Burke in the Annual Register (xiv. 70), 'the miserable result of all the pretended vigour of the Ministry.' See Parl. Hist. xvii. 58, 186.
[445] Lord Cornwallis's army surrendered at York Town, five days before Sir Henry Clinton's fleet and army arrived off the Chesapeak. Ann. Reg. xxiv. 136.
[446] Johnson wrote on March 30:—'The men have got in whom I have endeavoured to keep out; but I hope they will do better than their predecessors; it will not be easy to do worse.' Croker's Boswell, p. 706.
[447] This note was in answer to one which accompanied one of the earliest pamphlets on the subject of Chatterton's forgery, entitled Cursory Observations on the Poems attributed to Thomas Rowley, &c. Mr. Thomas Warton's very able Inquiry appeared about three months afterwards; and Mr. Tyrwhitt's admirable Vindication of his Appendix in the summer of the same hear, left the believers in this daring imposture nothing but 'the resolution to say again what had been said before.' MALONE.
[448] Pr. and Med. p. 207. BOSWELL.
[449] He addressed to him an Ode in Latin, entitled Ad Thomam Laurence, medicum doctissimum, quum filium peregre agentem desiderio nimis tristi prosequeretur. Works, i. 165.
[450] Mr. Holder, in the Strand, Dr. Johnson's apothecary. BOSWELL.
[451] 'Johnson should rather have written "imperatum est." But the meaning of the words is perfectly clear. "If you say yes, the messenger has orders to bring Holder to me." Mr. Croker translates the words as follows:-"If you consent, pray tell the messenger to bring Holder to me." If Mr. Croker is resolved to write on points of classical learning, we would advise him to begin by giving an hour every morning to our old friend Corderius.' Macaulay's Essays, ed. 1843, i 366. In The Answers to Mr. Macaulay's Criticism, prefixed to Croker's Boswell, p. 13, it is suggested that Johnson wrote either imperetur or imperator. The letter may be translated: 'A fresh chill, a fresh cough, and a fresh difficulty in breathing call for a fresh letting of blood. Without your advice, however, I would not submit to the operation. I cannot well come to you, nor need you come to me. Say yes or no in one word, and leave the rest to Holder and to me. If you say yes, let the messenger be bidden (imperetur) to bring Holder to me. May 1, 1782. When you have left, whither shall I turn?'
[452] Soon after the above letter, Dr. Lawrence left London, but not before the palsy had made so great a progress as to render him unable to write for himself. The folio wing are extracts from letters addressed by Dr. Johnson to one of his daughters:—
'You will easily believe with what gladness I read that you had heard once again that voice to which we have all so often delighted to attend. May you often hear it. If we had his mind, and his tongue, we could spare the rest.
'I am not vigorous, but much better than when dear Dr. Lawrence held my pulse the last time. Be so kind as to let me know, from one little interval to another, the state of his body. I am pleased that he remembers me, and hope that it never can be possible for me to forget him. July 22, 1782.'
'I am much delighted even with the small advances which dear Dr. Lawrence makes towards recovery. If we could have again but his mind, and his tongue in his mind, and his right hand, we should not much lament the rest. I should not despair of helping the swelled hand by electricity, if it were frequently and diligently supplied.
'Let me know from time to time whatever happens; and I hope I need not tell you, how much I am interested in every change. Aug. 26, 1782.'
'Though the account with which you favoured me in your last letter could not give me the pleasure that I wished, yet I was glad to receive it; for my affection to my dear friend makes me desirous of knowing his state, whatever it be. I beg, therefore, that you continue to let me know, from time to time, all that you observe.
'Many fits of severe illness have, for about three months past, forced my kind physician often upon my mind. I am now better; and hope gratitude, as well as distress, can be a motive to remembrance. Bolt-court, Fleet-street, Feb. 4, 1783.' BOSWELL.
[453] Mr. Langton being at this time on duty at Rochester, he is addressed by his military title. BOSWELL.
[454] Eight days later he recorded:—'I have in ten days written to Aston, Lucy, Hector, Langton, Boswell; perhaps to all by whom my letters are desired.' Pr. and Med. 209. He had written also to Mrs. Thrale, but her affection, it should seem from this, he was beginning to doubt.
[455] See ante, p. 84.
[456] See ante, i. 247.
[457] See post, p. 158, note 4.
[458] Johnson has here expressed a sentiment similar to that contained in one of Shenstone's stanzas, to which, in his life of that poet, he has given high praise:—
J. BOSWELL, JUN.
[459] She was his god-daughter. See post, May 10, 1784.
[460] 'Dr. Johnson gave a very droll account of the children of Mr. Langton, "who," he said, "might be very good children, if they were let alone; but the father is never easy when he is not making them do something which they cannot do; they must repeat a fable, or a speech, or the Hebrew alphabet, and they might as well count twenty for what they know of the matter; however, the father says half, for he prompts every other word."' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 73. See ante, p. 20, note 2.
[461] A part of this letter having been torn off, I have, from the evident meaning, supplied a few words and half-words at the ends and beginnings of lines. BOSWELL.
[462] See vol. ii. p. 459. BOSWELL. She was Hector's widowed sister, and Johnson's first love. In the previous October, writing of a visit to Birmingham, he said:—'Mrs. Careless took me under her care, and told me when I had tea enough.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 205.
[463] This letter cannot belong to this year. In it Johnson says of his health, 'at least it is not worse.' But 1782 found him in very bad health; he passed almost the whole of the year 'in a succession of disorders' (post, p. 156). What he says of friendship renders it almost certain that the letter was written while he had still Thrale; and him he lost in April, 1781. Had it been written after June, 1779, but before Thrale's death, the account given of health would have been even better than it is (ante, iii. 397). It belongs perhaps to the year 1777 or 1778.
[464] 'To a man who has survived all the companions of his youth ... this full-peopled world is a dismal solitude.' Rambler, No. 69.
[465] See ante, i. 63.
[466] They met on these days in the years 1772, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 81, and
3.
[467] The ministry had resigned on the 20th. Ante, p. 139, note 1.
[468] Thirty-two years earlier he wrote in The Rambler, No. 53:-'In the prospect of poverty there is nothing but gloom and melancholy; the mind and body suffer together; its miseries bring no alleviation; it is a state in which every virtue is obscured, and in which no conduct can avoid reproach.' And again in No. 57:—'The prospect of penury in age is so gloomy and terrifying, that every man who looks before him must resolve to avoid it; and it must be avoided generally by the science of sparing.' See ante. 441.
[469] See ante, p. 128.
[470] Hannah More wrote in April of this year (Memoirs, i. 249):—'Poor Johnson is in a bad state of health. I fear his constitution is broken up.' (Yet in one week he dined out four times. Piozzi Letters, ii. 237.) At one of these dinners, 'I urged him,' she continues (ib. p. 251) 'to take a little wine. He replied, "I can't drink a little, child; therefore, I never touch it. Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult." He was very good-humoured and gay. One of the company happened to say a word about poetry, "Hush, hush," said he, "it is dangerous to say a word of poetry before her; it is talking of the art of war before Hannibal."'
[471] This book was published in 1781, and, according to Lowndes, reached its seventh edition by 1787. See ante, i. 214.
[472] The clergyman's letter was dated May 4. Gent. Mag. 1786, p. 93. Johnson is explaining the reason of his delay in acknowledging it.
[473] What follows appeared in the Morning Chronicle of May 29, 1782:—'A correspondent having mentioned, in the Morning Chronicle of December 12, the last clause of the following paragraph, as seeming to favour suicide; we are requested to print the whole passage, that its true meaning may appear, which is not to recommend suicide but exercise.
'Exercise cannot secure us from that dissolution to which we are decreed: but while the soul and body continue united, it can make the association pleasing, and give probable hopes that they shall be disjoined by an easy separation. It was a principle among the ancients, that acute diseases are from Heaven, and chronical from ourselves; the dart of death, indeed, falls from Heaven, but we poison it by our own misconduct: to die is the fate of man; but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly.' [The Rambler, No. 85.] BOSWELL.
[474] The Correspondence may be seen at length in the Gent. Mag. Feb. 1786. BOSWELL. Johnson, advising Dr. Taylor 'to take as much exercise as he can bear,' says:-'I take the true definition of exercise to be labour without weariness.' Notes and Queries, 6th S. v. 461.
[475] Here he met Hannah More. 'You cannot imagine,' she writes (Memoirs, i. 261), 'with what delight he showed me every part of his own college. Dr. Adams had contrived a very pretty piece of gallantry. We spent the day and evening at his house. After dinner, Johnson begged to conduct me to see the College; he would let no one show it me but himself. "This was my room; this Shenstone's." Then, after pointing out all the rooms of the poets who had been of his college, "In short," said he, "we were a nest of singing-birds." When we came into the common-room, we spied a fine large print of Johnson, hung up that very morning, with this motto:—And is not Johnson ours, himself a host? Under which stared you in the face—From Miss More's "Sensibility." This little incident amused us; but, alas! Johnson looks very ill indeed—spiritless and wan. However, he made an effort to be cheerful.' Miss Adams wrote on June 14, 1782:—'On Wednesday we had here a delightful blue-stocking party. Dr. and Mrs. Kennicott and Miss More, Dr. Johnson, Mr. Henderson, &c., dined here. Poor Dr. Johnson is in very bad health, but he exerted himself as much as he could, and being very fond of Miss More, he talked a good deal, and every word he says is worth recording. He took great delight in showing Miss More every part of Pembroke College, and his own rooms, &c., and told us many things about himself when here. .. June 19, 1782. We dined yesterday for the last time in the company with Dr. Johnson; he went away to-day. A warm dispute arose; it was about cider or wine freezing, and all the spirit retreating to the center.' Pemb. Coll. MSS.
[476] 'I never retired to rest without feeling the justness of the Spanish proverb, "Let him who sleeps too much borrow the pillow of a debtor."' Johnson's Works, iv. 14.
[477] See ante, i. 441.
[478] Which I celebrated in the Church of England chapel at Edinburgh, founded by Lord Chief Baron Smith, of respectable and pious memory. BOSWELL.
[479] See ante, p. 80.
[480] The Reverend Mr. Temple, Vicar of St. Gluvias, Cornwall. BOSWELL. See ante, i. 436, and ii. 316.
[481] 'He had settled on his eldest son,' says Dr. Rogers (Boswelliana, p. 129), 'the ancestral estate, with an unencumbered rental of £l,600 a year.' That the rental, whatever it was, was not unencumbered is shewn by the passage from Johnson's letter, post, p. 155, note 4. Boswell wrote to Malone in 1791 (Croker's Boswell, p. 828):—'The clear money on which I can reckon out of my estate is scarcely £900 a year.'
[482] Cowley's Ode to Liberty, Stanza vi.
[483] 'I do beseech all the succeeding heirs of entail,' wrote Boswell in his will, 'to be kind to the tenants, and not to turn out old possessors to get a little more rent.' Rogers's Boswelliana, p. 186.
[484] Macleod, the Laird of Rasay. See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 8.
[485] A farm in the Isle of Skye, where Johnson wrote his Latin Ode to Mrs. Thrale. Ib. Sept. 6.
[486] Johnson wrote to Dr. Taylor on Oct. 4:—'Boswel's (sic) father is dead, and Boswel wrote me word that he would come to London for my advice. [The] advice which I sent him is to stay at home, and [busy] himself with his own affairs. He has a good es[tate], considerably burthened by settlements, and he is himself in debt. But if his wife lives, I think he will be prudent.' Notes and Queries, 6th S. v. 462.
[487] Miss Burney wrote in the first week in December:—'Dr. Johnson was in most excellent good humour and spirits.' She describes later on a brilliant party which he attended at Miss Monckton's on the 8th, where the people were 'superbly dressed,' and where he was 'environed with listeners.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 186, and 190. See ante, p. 108, note 4.
[488] See ante,, iii. 337, where Johnson got 'heated' when Boswell maintained this.
[489] See ante, in. 395.
[490] The greatest part of the copy, or manuscript of The Lives of the Poets had been given by Johnson to Boswell (ante, iv. 36).
[491] Of her twelve children but these three were living. She was forty-one years old.
[492] 'The family,' writes Dr. Burney, 'lived in the library, which used to be the parlour. There they breakfasted. Over the bookcases were hung Sir Joshua's portraits of Mr. Thrale's friends—Baretti, Burke, Burney, Chambers, Garrick, Goldsmith, Johnson, Murphy, Reynolds, Lord Sandys, Lord Westcote, and in the same picture Mrs. Thrale and her eldest daughter.' Mr. Thrale's portrait was also there. Dr. Burney's Memoirs, ii. 80, and Prior's Malone, p. 259.
[493] Pr. and Med. p. 214. BOSWELL.
[494] Boswell omits a line that follows this prayer:—'O Lord, so far as, &c.,—Thrale.' This means, I think, 'so far as it might be lawful, I prayed for Thrale.' The following day Johnson entered:—'I was called early. I packed up my bundles, and used the foregoing prayer with my morning devotions, somewhat, I think, enlarged. Being earlier than the family, I read St. Paul's farewell in the Acts [xx. 17-end], and then read fortuitously in the gospels, which was my parting use of the library.'
[495] Johnson, no doubt, was leaving Streatham because Mrs. Thrale was leaving it. 'Streatham,' wrote Miss Burney, on Aug. 12 of this year, 'my other home, and the place where I have long thought my residence dependent only on my own pleasure, is already let for three years to Lord Shelburne.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii.151. Johnson was not yet leaving the Thrale family, for he joined them at Brighton, and he was living with them the following spring in Argyll-street. Nevertheless, if, as all Mrs. Thrale's friends strongly held, her second marriage was blameworthy, Boswell's remark admits of defence. Miss Burney in her diary and letters keeps the secret which Mrs. Thrale had confided to her of her attachment to Mr. Piozzi; but in the Memoirs of Dr. Burney, which, as Mme. D'Arblay, she wrote long afterwards, she leaves little doubt that Streatham was given up as a step towards the second marriage. In 1782, on a visit there, she found that her father 'and all others—Dr. Johnson not excepted—were cast into the same gulf of general neglect. As Mrs. Thrale became more and more dissatisfied with her own situation, and impatient for its relief, she slighted Johnson's counsel, and avoided his society.' Mme. D'Arblay describes a striking scene in which her father, utterly puzzled by 'sad and altered Streatham,' left it one day with tears in his eyes. Another day, Johnson accompanied her to London. 'His look was stern, though dejected, but when his eye, which, however shortsighted, was quick to mental perception, saw how ill at ease she appeared, all sternness subsided into an undisguised expression of the strongest emotion, while, with a shaking hand and pointing finger, he directed her looks to the mansion from which they were driving; and when they faced it from the coach-window, as they turned into Streatham Common, tremulously exclaimed, "That house ...is lost to me... for ever."' Johnson's letter to Langton of March 20, 1782 (ante, p. 145), in which he says that he was 'musing in his chamber at Mrs. Thrale's,' shews that so early as that date he foresaw that a change was coming. Boswell's statement that 'Mrs. Thrale became less assiduous to please Johnson,' might have been far more strongly worded. See Dr. Burney's Memoirs, ii. 243-253. Lord Shelburne, who as Prime Minister was negotiating peace with the United States, France, and Spain, hired Mrs. Thrale's house 'in order to be constantly near London.' Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, iii. 242.
[496] Mr. Croker quotes the following from the Rose MSS.:—'Oct. 6, Die Dominica, 1782. Pransus sum Streathamiae agninum crus coctum cum herbis (spinach) comminutis, farcimen farinaceum cum uvis passis, lumbos bovillos, et pullum gallinae: Turcicae; et post carnes missas, ficus, uvas, non admodum maturas, ita voluit anni intemperies, cum malis Persicis, iis tamen duris. Non laetus accubui, cibum modicè sumpsi, ne intemperantiâ ad extremum peccaretur. Si recte memini, in mentem venerunt epulae in exequiis Hadoni celebratae. Streathamiam quando revisam?'
[497] 'Mr. Metcalfe is much with Dr. Johnson, but seems to have taken an unaccountable dislike to Mrs. Thrale, to whom he never speaks.... He is a shrewd, sensible, keen, and very clever man.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 172, 174. He, Burke, and Malone were Sir Joshua's executors. Northcote's Reynolds, ii. 293.
[498] Boswell should have shown, for he must have known it, that Johnson was Mrs. Thrale's guest at Brighton. Miss Burney was also of the party. Her account of him is a melancholy one:—'Oct. 28. Dr. Johnson accompanied us to a ball, to the universal amazement of all who saw him there; but he said he had found it so dull being quite alone the preceding evening, that he determined upon going with us; "for," said he, "it cannot be worse than being alone."' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 161. 'Oct. 29. Mr. Pepys joined Dr. Johnson, with whom he entered into an argument, in which he was so roughly confuted, and so severely ridiculed, that he was hurt and piqued beyond all power of disguise, and, in the midst of the discourse, suddenly turned from him, and, wishing Mrs. Thrale goodnight, very abruptly withdrew. Dr. Johnson was certainly right with respect to the argument and to reason; but his opposition was so warm, and his wit so satirical and exulting, that I was really quite grieved to see how unamiable he appeared, and how greatly he made himself dreaded by all, and by many abhorred.' Ib. p. 163. 'Oct. 30. In the evening we all went to Mrs. Hatsel's. Dr. Johnson was not invited.' Ib. p. 165. 'Oct. 31. A note came to invite us all, except Dr. Johnson, to Lady Rothes's.' Ib. p. 168. 'Nov. 2. We went to Lady Shelley's. Dr. Johnson again excepted in the invitation. He is almost constantly omitted, either from too much respect or too much fear. I am sorry for it, as he hates being alone.' Ib. p. 160. 'Nov. 7. Mr. Metcalfe called upon Dr. Johnson, and took him out an airing. Mr. Hamilton is gone, and Mr. Metcalfe is now the only person out of this house that voluntarily communicates with the Doctor. He has been in a terrible severe humour of late, and has really frightened all the people, till they almost ran from him. To me only I think he is now kind, for Mrs. Thrale fares worse than anybody.' Ib. p. 177.
[499] '"Dr. Johnson has asked me," said Mr. Metcalfe, "to go with him to Chichester, to see the cathedral, and I told him I would certainly go if he pleased; but why I cannot imagine, for how shall a blind man see a cathedral?" "I believe," quoth I [i.e. Miss Burney] "his blindness is as much the effect of absence as of infirmity, for he sees wonderfully at times."' Ib. p. 174. For Johnson's eyesight, see ante, i. 41.
[500] The second letter is dated the 28th. Johnson says:—'I have looked often,' &c.; but he does not say 'he has been much informed,' but only 'informed.' Both letters are in the Gent. Mag. 1784, p. 893.
[501] The reference is to Rawlinson's MS. collections for a continuation of Wood's Athenae (Macray's Annals of the Bodleian, p. 181).
[502] Jortin's sermons are described by Johnson as 'very elegant.' Ante, in. 248. He and Thirlby are mentioned by him in the Life of Pope. Works, viii. 254.
[503] Markland was born 1693, died 1776. His notes on some of Euripides' Plays were published at the expense of Dr. Heberden. Markland had previously destroyed a great many other notes; writing in 1764 he said:—'Probably it will be a long time (if ever) before this sort of learning will revive in England; in which it is easy to foresee that there must be a disturbance in a few years, and all public disorders are enemies to this sort of literature.' Gent. Mag. 1778, P. 3l0. 'I remember,' writes Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 252), 'when lamentation was made of the neglect shown to Jeremiah Markland, a great philologist, as some one ventured to call him: "He is a scholar undoubtedly, Sir," replied Dr. Johnson, "but remember that he would run from the world, and that it is not the world's business to run after him. I hate a fellow whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness drives into a corner, and [who] does nothing when he is there but sit and growl; let him come out as I do, and bark"' A brief account of him is given in the Ann. Reg. xix. 45.
[504] Nichols published in 1784 a brief account of Thirlby, nearly half of it being written by Johnson. Thirlby was born in 1692 and died in 1753. 'His versatility led him to try the round of what are called the learned professions.' His life was marred by drink and insolence.' His mind seems to have been tumultuous and desultory, and he was glad to catch any employment that might produce attention without anxiety; such employment, as Dr. Battie has observed, is necessary for madmen.' Gent. Mag. 1784, pp. 260, 893.
[505] He was attacked, says Northcote (Life of Reynolds, ii. 131), 'by a slight paralytic affection, after an almost uninterrupted course of good health for many years.' Miss Burney wrote on Dec. 28 to one of her sisters:—'How can you wish any wishes [matrimonial wishes] about Sir Joshua and me? A man who has had two shakes of the palsy!' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 218.
[506] Dr. Patten in Sept. 1781 (Croker's Boswell, p. 699) informed Johnson of Wilson's intended dedication. Johnson, in his reply, said:—'What will the world do but look on and laugh when one scholar dedicates to another?'