'Præterea minimus gelido jam in corpore sanguis 45 minutes past 10 P. M.-While I was writing the adjoining articles I received the fatal account, so long dreaded, that Dr. Johnson was no more! May those prayers which he incessantly poured from a heart fraught with the deepest devotion, find that acceptance with Him to whom they were addressed, which piety, so humble and so fervent, may seem to promise! Dr. Brocklesby made him an offer of 100l. a year if he should determine to go abroad; he pressed his hands and said, 'God bless you through Jesus Christ, but I will take no money but from my sovereign". This, if I mistake not, was told the King through West 3. That Johnson wanted much assistance, and that the Chancellor meant to apply for it, His Majesty was told through the same channel. On dissection of the body, vesicles of wind were found on the lungs (which Dr. Heberden said he had never seen, and of which Cruikshank professed to have seen only two instances), one of the kidneys quite gone, a gall stone in the bladder, I think; no water in the chest, and little in the abdomen, no more than might have found its way thither after death. 20th. A memorable day-the day which saw deposited in Westminster Abbey the remains of Johnson. After our return from the Abbey I spent some time with Burke on the subject of his negociation with the Chancellor. We dined at Sir Joshua Reynolds', viz. Burke and R. Burke, Metcalf, Colman, Hoole, Scott, Burney and Brocklesby. MINOR ANECDOTES OF DR. JOHNSON BY ROBERT BARCLAY. [FROM Croker's Boswell, x. 122. For Robert Barclay, who with John Perkins bought Thrale's Brewery, see Life, iv. 118, n. 1; Letters, ii. 216 n. He was the great-grandson of the author of the Apology. He must not be confused with his cousin and contemporary Robert Barclay, the banker of Lombard Street.] Mr. Barclay, from his connexion with Mr. Thrale, had several opportunities of meeting and conversing with Dr. Johnson. On his becoming a partner in the brewery, Johnson advised him not to allow his commercial pursuits to divert his attention from his studies. 'A mere literary man,' said the Doctor, ‘is a dull man; a man who is solely a man of business is a selfish man; but when literature and commerce are united, they make a respectable man'.' Mr. Barclay had never observed any rudeness or violence on the part of Johnson. He has seen Boswell lay down his knife and fork, and take out his tablets, in order to register a good anecdote2. When Johnson proceeded to the dining-room, one of Mr. Thrale's servants handed him a wig of a smarter description than the one he wore in the morning; the exchange I 'Domi inter mille mercaturae negotia literarum elegantiam minime neglexit.' Johnson's epitaph on Mr. Thrale. Ante, i. 238; ii. 13, 309. 2 took took place in the hall, or passage1. Johnson, like many other men, was always in much better humour after dinner than before. Mr. Barclay saw Johnson ten days before he died, when the latter observed, That they should never meet more. Have you any objection to receive an old man's blessing?' Mr. Barclay knelt down, and Johnson gave him his blessing with great fervency. BY H. D. BEST. [From Personal and Literary Memorials, 1 vol., 8vo. London, 1829, pp. 11, 62, 63, 65.] Mrs. Digby told me that when she lived in London with her sister Mrs. Brooke 2, they were every now and then honoured by the visits of Dr. Johnson. He called on them one day soon after the publication of his immortal dictionary. The two ladies paid him due compliments on the occasion. Amongst other topics of praise they very much commended the omission of all naughty words. 'What, my dears! then you have been looking for them?' said the moralist. The ladies, confused at being thus caught, dropped the subject of the dictionary. In early youth I knew Bennet Langton, of that ilk, as the Scotch say. With great personal claims to the respect of the public, he is known to that public chiefly as a friend of Johnson. He was a very tall, meagre, long-visaged man, much resembling, according to Richard Paget, a stork standing on one leg, near the shore, in Raphael's cartoon of the miraculous draught of fishes. His manners were in the highest degree polished; his conversation mild, equable, and always pleasing. He had the uncommon faculty of being a good reader 3. I formed an I 1 Ante, i. 307. 2 Ante, i. 322; ii. 192. 3 He read Dodsley's Cleone to Johnson, who 'at the end of an act said, "Come, let's have some more, let's go into the slaughterhouse again, Lanky. But I am afraid there is more blood than brains." Life, iv. 20. intimacy intimacy with his son, and went to pay him a visit at Langton. After breakfast we walked to the top of a very steep hill behind the house. When we arrived at the summit, Mr. Langton said, 'Poor, dear Dr. Johnson, when he came to this spot, turned to look down the hill, and said he was determined "to take a roll down 1." When we understood what he meant to do, we endeavoured to dissuade him; but he was resolute, saying, he had not had a roll for a long time; and taking out of his lesser pockets whatever might be in them-keys, pencil, purse, or pen-knife, and laying himself parallel with the edge of the hill, he actually descended, turning himself over and over till he came to the bottom.' The story was told with such gravity, and with an air of such affectionate remembrance of a departed friend, that it was impossible to suppose this extraordinary freak of the great lexicographer to have been a fiction or invention of Mr. Langton. BY SIR BROOKE BOOTHBY. [The following anecdotes were communicated to Dr. Anderson by Sir Brooke Boothby, Bart., 'who had frequent opportunities of enjoying the company of Johnson at Lichfield and Ashbourne.' Anderson's Life of Fohnson, ed. 1815, p. 322. Sir Brooke Boothby was the brother of Miss Hill Boothby. Ante, i. 18; Life, i. 83; Letters, i. 45.] Johnson spoke as he wrote. He would take up a topic, and utter upon it a number of the Rambler 2. On a question, one day, at Miss Porter's, concerning the authority of a newspaper for some fact, he related, that a lady of his acquaintance implicitly believed every thing she read in the papers; and that, by way of curing her credulity, he fabricated a story of a battle between the Russians and Turks, then at war; and 'that it I ' Johnson visited Langton in 1764. Life, i. 476; ante, i. 286, 291. 2 Ante, i. 348; ii. 92. 'M. de Buffon remarque très-bien que ceux qui écrivent comme ils parlent, quoiqu'ils parlent très-bien, écrivent mal.' Correspondance de Grimm, ed. 1814, i. 33. might,' he said, 'bear internal evidence of its futility, I laid the scene in an island at the conflux of the Boristhenes and the Danube; rivers which run at the distance of a hundred leagues from each other. The lady, however, believed the story, and never forgave the deception; the consequence of which was, that I lost an agreeable companion, and she was deprived of an innocent amusement'.' And he added, as an extraordinary circumstance, that the Russian ambassador sent in great haste to the printer, to know from whence he had received the intelligence. Another time, at Dr. Taylor's, a few days after the death of the wife of the Rev. Mr. Kennedy, of Bradley, a woman of extraordinary sense, he described the eccentricities of the man and the woman, with a nicety of discrimination, and a force of language, equal to the best of his periodical essays. Now, with such powers, and the full confidence he felt in himself before any audience, he must have made an able and impressive speaker in Parliament 3. BY THE REV. W. COLE. [From Cole's Collection in the British Museum. Croker's Boswell, x. 123.] I was told by Mr. Farmer, the present Master of Emanuel College, that he being in London last year [1774] with Mr. Arnold, tutor in St. John's College, was desired to introduce The lady was Mrs. Salusbury, Mrs. Thrale's mother. She was reconciled to Johnson. Ante, i. 235. 2 A village in Derbyshire, where Johnson visited the Meynells. Life, i. 82; Letters, i. 45, n. 6. 'In 1762 he wrote for the Rev. Dr. John Kennedy, the Rector of Bradley, in a strain of very courtly elegance a dedication to the King.' Life, i. 366. It is probably the same Dr. Kennedy who wrote a foolish tragedy which had been shown to Mr. Fitzherbert, and who married Miss Meynell. Ib. iii. 238. The following anecdote is recorded of one branch of the Meynells in Hutton's History of Derby, ed. 1867, p. 267. While the Meynell family were spending their sober evening by the glow of their own fire, a coach and six was heard rolling up to the door. "Bring candles," says the lady of the mansion, with some emotion, while she stept forward to receive the guests; but instantly returning, "Light up a rush," said she, "it is only my cousin Curzon."' |