1731.

and malevolence of his party; yet difference of opinion did not keep us Atat. 22. apart. apart. I honoured him, and he endured me.

"He had mingled with the gay world without exemption from its vices or its follies; but had never neglected the cultivation of his mind. His belief of revelation was unfhaken; his learning preferved his principles; he grew first regular, and then pious.

"His ftudies had been fo various, that I am not able to name a man of equal knowledge. His acquaintance with books was great, and what he did not immediately know, he could, at least, tell where to find. Such was his amplitude of learning, and fuch his copioufnefs of communication, that it may be doubted whether a day now paffes, in which I have not fome advantage from his friendship.

"At this man's table I enjoyed many cheerful and instructive hours, with companions, fuch as are not often found-with one who has lengthened, and one who has gladdened life; with Dr. James, whose skill in phyfick will be long remembered; and with David Garrick, whom I hoped to have gratified with this character of our common friend. But what are the hopes of man! I am disappointed by that stroke of death, which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and impoverished the publick stock of harmless pleasure."

In thefe families he paffed much time in his early years. In moft of them, he was in the company of ladies, particularly at Mr. Walmsley's, whose wife and fifters-in-law, of the name of Afton, and daughters of a baronet, were remarkable for good breeding; fo that the notion which has been industriously circulated and believed, that he never was in good company till late in life, and, consequently, had been confirmed in coarse and ferocious manners by long habits, is wholly without foundation. Some of the ladies have affured me, they recollected him well when a young man, as diftinguished for his complaifance.

And that this politenefs was not merely occafional and temporary, or confined to the circles of Lichfield, is afcertained by the teftimony of a lady, who, in a paper with which I have been favoured by a daughter of his intimate friend and phyfician, Dr. Lawrence, thus defcribes Dr. Johnson fome years afterwards:

"As the particulars of the former part of Dr. Johnson's life do not seem to be very accurately known, a lady hopes that the following information may not be unacceptable.

"She remembers Dr. Johnson on a visit to Dr. Taylor, at Ashbourn, fome time between the end of the year 37, and the middle of the year 40; fhe rather

1732.

rather thinks it to have been after he and his wife were removed to London. During his stay at Afhbourn, he made frequent vifits to Mr. Meynell, at Etat. 23. Brodley, where his company was much defired by the ladies of the family, who were, perhaps, in point of elegance and accomplishments, inferiour to few of those with whom he was afterwards acquainted. Mr. Meynell's eldest daughter was afterwards married to Mr. Fitzherbert, father to Mr. Alleyne Fitzherbert, lately minifter to the court of Ruffia. Of her, Dr. Johnson faid, in Dr. Lawrence's study, that she had the best understanding he ever met with in any human being. At Mr. Meynell's he also commenced that friendship with Mrs. Hill Boothby, fifter to the present Sir Brook Boothby, which continued till her death. The young woman whom he used to call Molly Afton, was fister to Sir Thomas Afton, and daughter to a Baronet; fhe was likewise fifter to the wife of his friend Mr. Gilbert Walmsley. Besides his intimacy with the above-mentioned perfons, who were furely people of rank and education, while he was yet at Lichfield he used to be frequently at the house of Dr. Swinfen, a gentleman of a very ancient family in Staffordshire, from which, after the death of his elder brother, he inherited a good estate. He was, befides, a physician of very extenfive practice; but for want of due attention to the management of his domestic concerns, left a very large family in indigence. One of his daughters, Mrs. Definoulins, afterwards found an asylum in the house of her old friend, whofe doors were always open to the unfortunate, and who well obferved the precept of the gofpel, for he was kind to the unthankful and to the evil."

In the forlorn ftate of his circumftances he accepted of an offer to be employed as usher in the school of Market-Bofworth, in Leicestershire, to which it appears, from one of his little fragments of a diary, that he went on foot, on the 16th of July," Julii 16. Bofvortiam pedes petii." But it is not true, as has been erroneoufly related, that he was affiftant to the famous Anthony Blackwall, whofe merit has been honoured by the teftimony of Bishop Hurd, who was his fcholar; for Mr. Blackwall died on the 8th of April, 17302, more than a year before Johnson left the University.

This employment was very irksome to him in every respect, and he complained grievously of it in his letters to his friend Mr. Hector, who was now fettled as a furgeon at Birmingham. The letters are loft; but Mr. Hector recollects his writing "that the poet had defcribed the dull famenefs of his existence in these words, Vitam continet una dies' (one day contains the whole 9 See Gent. Mag. Dec. 1784, p. 957.

The words of Sir John Hawkins, p. 316.

of

of my life); that it was unvaried as the note of the cuckow; and that he did not know whether it was more difagreeable for him to teach, or the boys to learn, the grammar rules." His general averfion to this painful drudgery was greatly enhanced by a difagreement between him and Sir Woolston Dixey, the patron of the school, in whofe houfe, I have been told, he officiated as a kind of domestick chaplain, fo far, at least, as to fay grace at table, but was treated with what he reprefented as intolerable harfhnefs; and, after fuffering for a few months fuch complicated mifery, he relinquifhed a fituation which all his life afterwards he recollected with the strongest averfion, and even a degree of horrour. But it is probable that at this period, whatever uneasiness he may have endured, he laid the foundation of much future eminence by application to his studies.

Being now again totally unoccupied, he was invited by Mr. Hector to pafs fome time with him at Birmingham, as his gueft, at the house of Mr. Warren, with whom Mr. Hector lodged and boarded. Mr. Warren was the first established bookfeller in Birmingham, and was very attentive to Johnson, who he foon found could be of much service to him in his trade, by his knowledge of literature; and he even obtained the affiftance of his pen in furnishing fome numbers of a periodical Effay printed in the newspaper, of which Warren was proprietor. After very diligent inquiry, I have not been able to recover thofe early fpecimens of that particular mode of writing by which Johnfon afterwards fo greatly diftinguished himself.

He continued to live as Mr. Hector's gueft for about fix months, and then hired lodgings in another part of the town, finding himself as well fituated at Birmingham as he fuppofed he could be any where, while he had no fettled plan of life, and very fcanty means of fubfiftence. He made fome valuable acquaintances there, amongst whom were Mr. Porter, a mercer, whose widow he afterwards married, and Mr. Taylor, who by his ingenuity in mechanical inventions, and his fuccefs in trade, acquired an immense fortune. But the comfort of being near Mr. Hector, his old fchoolfellow and intimate friend, was Johnfon's chief inducement to continue here.

In what manner he employed his pen at this period, or whether he derived from it any pecuniary advantage, I have not been able to ascertain. He probably got a little money from Mr. Warren; and we are certain, that he executed here one piece of literary labour, of which Mr. Hector has favoured me with a minute account. Having mentioned that he had read at Pembroke College a Voyage to Abyffinia, by Lobo, a Portuguese jefuit, and that he thought an abridgement and tranflation of it from the French into English

might be an useful and profitable publication, Mr. Warren and Mr. Hector
joined in urging him to undertake it.
him to undertake it. He accordingly agreed; and the
book not being to be found in Birmingham, he borrowed it of Pembroke
College. A part of the work being very foon done, one Ofborn, who was
Mr. Warren's printer, was fet to work with what was ready, and Johnson
engaged to fupply the prefs with copy as it fhould be wanted; but his con-
stitutional indolence foon prevailed, and the work was at a stand. Mr.
Hector, who knew that a motive of humanity would be the most prevailing
argument with his friend, went to Johnson, and represented to him, that the
printer could have no other employment till this undertaking was finished,
and that the poor man and his family were fuffering. Johnfon upon this
exerted the powers of his mind, though his body was relaxed. He lay in
bed with the book, which was a quarto, before him, and dictated while Hector
wrote. Mr. Hector carried the fheets to the prefs, and corrected almost all the
proof sheets, very few of which were even seen by Johnson. In this manner,
with the aid of Mr. Hector's active friendship, the book was completed,
and was published in 1735, with LONDON upon the title-page, though it
was in reality printed at Birmingham, a device too common with provincial
publishers. For this work he had from Mr. Warren only the fum of five
guineas.

1733.

Etat. 24.

This being the first profe work of Johnson, it is a curious object of inquiry how much may be traced in it of that style which marks his subfequent writings with fuch peculiar excellence; with so happy an union of force, vivacity, and perfpicuity. I have perused the book with this view, and have found that here, as I believe in every other translation, there is in the work itself no veftige of the tranflator's own ftyle; for the language of tranflation being adapted to the thoughts of another perfon, infenfibly follows their caft, and, as it were, runs into a mould that is ready prepared. Thus, for inftance, taking the first sentence that occurs at the opening of the book, p. 4. "I lived here above a year, and completed my studies in divinity; in which time fome letters were received from the fathers in Ethiopia, with an account that Sultan Segned, Emperour of Abyffinia, was converted to the church of Rome; that many of his fubjects had followed his example, and that there was a great want of miffionaries to improve thefe profperous beginnings. Every body was very defirous of feconding the zeal of our fathers, and of fending them the affiftance they requested; to which we were the more encouraged, because the Emperour's letter informed our Provincial, that we might eafily enter his dominions by the way of Dancala;

but,

1733.

Etat. 24.

but, unhappily, the secretary wrote Geila for Dancala, which cost two of our fathers their lives." Every one acquainted with Johnson's manner will be sensible that there is nothing of it here, but that this fentence might have been composed by any other man.

But, in the Preface, the Johnfonian ftyle begins to appear; and though ufe had not yet taught his wing a permanent and equable flight, there are parts of it which exhibit his best manner in full vigour. I had once the pleasure of examining it with Mr. Edmund Burke, who confirmed me in this opinion, by his fuperiour critical fagacity, and was, I remember, much delighted with the following fpecimen :

"The Portuguese traveller, contrary to the general vein of his countrymen, has amused his reader with no romantick abfurdity, or incredible fictions; whatever he relates, whether true or not, is at least probable; and he who tells nothing exceeding the bounds of probability, has a right to demand that they should believe him who cannot contradict him.

"He appears, by his modest and unaffected narration, to have described things as he faw them, to have copied nature from the life, and to have confulted his senses, not his imagination. He meets with no bafilisks that destroy with their eyes, his crocodiles devour their prey without tears, and his cataracts fall from the rocks without deafening the neighbouring inhabitants.

"The reader will here find no regions curfed with irremediable barrennefs, or bleffed with fpontaneous fecundity; no perpetual gloom, or unceasing funfhine; nor are the nations here described either devoid of all fenfe of humanity, or confummate in all private or focial virtues. Here are no Hottentots without religious polity or articulate language; no Chinese perfectly polite, and completely skilled in all sciences; he will difcover, what will always be discovered by a diligent and impartial enquirer, that wherever human nature is to be found, there is a mixture of vice and virtue, a contest of paffion and reafon ; and that the Creator doth not appear partial in his distributions, but has balanced, in moft countries, their particular inconveniencies by particular favours.”

Here we have an early example of that brilliant and energetick expreffion, which, upon innumerable occafions in his fubfequent life, juftly impressed the world with the highest admiration.

Nor can any one, converfant with the writings of Johnson, fail to difcern his hand in this paffage of the Dedication to John Warren, Efq. of Pembrokeshire, though it is ascribed to Warren the bookseller. "A generous and elevated mind is distinguished by nothing more certainly than an eminent degree