ON THE LETTERS OF MISS HILL BOOTHBY TO DR. JOHNSON.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

ENCOURAGED by a persuasion that you are too deeply interested in the investigation of Dr. Johnson's personal character, and in the record of such circumstances in the history of his friendships as tended to elevate and spiritualize his mind, I ask admission for this my fourth communication, explanatory of his correspondence with one who was, as I think, his last human guide through life's wilderness.

In the late edition of Boswell, Mr. Croker has inserted thirty-one original letters from Miss Hill Boothby to Johnson; not indeed printed now for the first time, as they had been given to the world in 1805, in an obscure volume, which attracted little attention, and, among other causes, from its having been crippled by a sarcastic article in the Edinburgh Review. Mr. Croker's remarks on the correspondence are generally correct; and he has well explained the apparent excess of affectionate expression in the case of both parties. This had occasioned the sneers of many who were personally hostile to Dr. Johnson, and who were farther glad, it is presumed, to shelter their dislike of his friend's principles under an attack upon her delicacy. It is quite sufficient to say that Miss Boothby wrote as from the gates of death, as will be evident from the very first extract in the sequel. Her letters, taken altogether, sustain the reputation attached to her name, both as an intellectual and devout character; and if they are compared with the specimens of her correspondence published in your Number for January, 1831, the reader will mark her tact and discriminative skill, in adapting her language and mode of instruction to the various persons who were privileged by her anxiety and prayers for their happiness.

I have copied such portions of Miss Boothby's papers as are more directly religious; but they lose much of their beauty, from being quarried out of the native marble, in scanty and irregular masses. She knew how to value the literature of the man whom she still endeavoured to allure to something better; and the chief blemish of her letters seems to be a somewhat too high strain of compliment when speaking of Johnson's writings. She probably went, in this respect, to the utmost extent allowed by her conscience; and wished to convince him that she was perfectly able herself to enjoy the lettered luxury of the Johnsonian circle, though at the same time conscious of its powers of seduction. A selection from her correspondence follows:"30th July, 1753. I am enabled to march on steadily with my shattered frame how long I think not of, but cheerfully wait for

'Kind Nature's signal of retreat *,' whenever it pleases God. I hope however to see you the author of a great Dictionary before I go, and to have the pleasure of joining with a whole nation in your applause ; and when you have put into their hands the means of speaking and writing the English language with as much purity and propriety as it is capable of being spoken and wrote, give me leave to recommend to you your future studies and labours: let them all be devoted to the glory of God, to exemplify the true use of all languages and tongues. The vanity of all human wishes you have finely and forcibly proved: what is then left for you but to seek after certain and permanent happiness, divine and eternal goods,

(These goods He grants, who grants the power to gain,')

and with all the great talents bestowed on you to call others to the same pursuit. How should I rejoice to see your pen wholly employed in the glorious Christian cause, inviting

This and the following citation are from The Vanity of Human Wishes,' published in 1749.

not till then, will you be happy, as I ardently wish you. ****** I love your letters, and always rejoice: to find myself in your thoughts. You are very frequently in mine; and seldom without a petition to Heaven for you. Poor is that love which is bounded by the narrow space of this temporal scene: mine extends to an eternity; and I cannot desire any thing less for you, for whom I have the sincerest regard, than endless happiness.”"Tissington, July 23, 1755. I am desirous that in the great and one thing necessary, you should think as I do; and I am persuaded you some time will. I will not enter into a controversy with you. I am sure I never can this way convince you in any point wherein we may differ; nor can any mortal convince me, by human arguments, that there is not a Divine evidence for Divine truths. Such the Apostle plainly defines faith to be, when he tells us, it is 'the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.' Human testimony can go no farther than things seen, and visible to the senses. Divine and spiritual things are far above; and what says St.

Paul?

For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.' Do read the whole chapter; and, if you please, Mr. Romaine's Sermon, or Dis course, lately published, On the benefit which the Holy Spirit of God is of to man in his journey through life.' I utterly disclaim all faith that does not work by lovelove that

• Takes every creature in of every kind;' and believe from my soul that in every sect and denomination of Christians, there are numbers, great numbers, who will sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the promise you quote be gloriously fulfilled. I believe, and rejoice in this assurance of happiness for ten thousand times ten thousand thousand, &c. of every language and nation

and people. I am convinced that many true Christians differ; and if such do differ, it can be only in words, with regard to which great caution should be used."-" July 29, 1755. I hope our difference is only in words, or that in time our sentiments will be so much the same as to make our expressions clear and plain. As you say, every moment: brings the time nearer in which we must think alike. O may this time (or rather end of time to us), which will fully disclose truth, also with it disclose eternal happiness to us! You see I cannot help praying for: you; nor shall I ever, as I am truly, dear sir, your affectionate friend.""August 20,1755. The least degree of your quiet is a treasure which I shall take the utmost care of; but yet, from my certain experience, and the truest regard to your peace, I must advise to take it out of all human hands.

Lean not on earth; 't will pierce thee to the heart;

A broken reed at best; but oft a spear; On its sharp point peace bleeds, and hope expires.'

Yet such has been the amazing

say,

mercy of God to me, that now I can 'It is good for me that I have been afflicted.' Looking over some old papers lately, I found two lines I had scratched out, which were prophetic of what has since happened to me.

endeavour to execute the duty of one. Peace and happiness here and for ever do I most ardently wish you."-" September 20, 1755. You have often declared you cannot be alone; and I, as often, that I could not be long unless I was some hours every day alone. I have found myself mistaken; for yet I am in being, though for some time past I have seldom had one half hour in a day to myself; and I have learned this profitable lesson, that resignation is better than indulgence; and time is too precious a thing for me to have at my own disposal. Providence has given it to others; and, if it may profit them, I shall rejoice. It is all I desire. I can only be sorry that the text in the Corinthians (1 Cor. ii. 11) does not prove to you what I would have it, and add to my prayers for you that it may prove it."Miss Boothby died January 16, 1756. In tracing the history of Dr. Johnson during the twenty-eight years which elapsed between the departure of his faithful monitress and his own, it is lamentable to observe his practical forgetfulness of her instruction. He could not by his own confession be alone; but he does not appear to have understood the distinction between unhealthy solitude, and the distemperature of social dissipation. He lived too much in mixed society to be acquainted with God and himself; while from his strictness in many things where others indulged themselves, he gained the dangerous credit of being religious. In this manner he came to be admired by bad men, numbers of whom had sagacity enough, notwithstanding, to detect his inconsistency. Had he reached the genuine Christian standard, the admiration of such persons would have been converted into hatred, and into efforts towards contempt. But no one can carefully read the details of Boswell, without perceiving that his idol lived on too easy terms with the world around him. He was shocked indeed by blasphemy, and irritated by infidels and self-satisfied specuCHRIST. OBSERV. No. 361.

lators: but he could endure things which the sensitive conscience most fears; the union, for example, of religious forms with a worldly life, where the Sunday's observances are weighed against the practices of the week. He exhibited, it is true, occasional outbreaks of severity against the grosser offences of mankind, and with a fidelity sometimes, which might have put to shame individuals far more consistent than himself, but less able, from natural timidity, to thunder out reproof. And in this kind of faithfulness he was supported by various members of his little senate, who were comforted by feeling their own superiority to profligates and Deists. Johnson, in fact, still felt himself a part of the multitude around him; and it is equally true, that the multitude acknowledged the intimacy of such a connexion: therefore his rebukes of vice were part of the contrast between him and his associates. He was allowed to frown upon the coarseness of a libertine, and the rude talk of a Deist; since this measure of reproof did not at all interfere with the profits and pleasures of the children of this world. When his prayers and meditations were published after his death, the discerning Christian too plainly saw the truth of Milner's remark, that "Dr. Johnson was always living against his convictions." How affecting are his confessions of guilt; his records of violated vows; his resolutions for the future, made, as it were, in despair of being fulfilled; his substitution of small penances for deep and serious repentance; his dark and mysterious remembrances of the dead, as if they were yet existing in a purificatory state; and finally, his admixture of human merit with the one and perfect oblation of Jesus Christ. From all this his excellent monitress laboured to relieve him.

Such at least was the direct tendency of Miss Boothby's doctrine. She would have taught him the Divine lesson, "Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might

C

know the things that are freely given to us of God." Her friend was labouring, as in the fire, to establish another claim to the privileges of the kingdom of God. Far more enlightened, all the while, than the majority of his friends, and less consistent in practice than some of them, he yet seems to have constructed a system which satisfied both parties and influenced neither. In the mean time, his conscience was writing heavy accusations against him, while the Gospel shewed itself as in clouds and darkness; and thus he wandered in the twilight of revelation, seeing many things, but all of them in shadowy obscurity.

Let us, however, hope that, in regard to the exemplary person whose letters have occasioned these remarks, the memory of the just was ultimately blessed to her survivor. The general current of evidence respecting Dr. Johnson's last days is certainly in favour of his spiritual character. Neither can I contemplate the closing scene, nor the perpetual struggles in his mind between practice and conviction, for some sense of religion appears to have been generally present to his thoughts, without believing that the example, warnings, and prayers of Hill Boothby, and, let me add, the sense of her death (so it is described in his prayers,) were chiefly the human means of his salvation. The blessing, indeed, came, if it came at all, at the eleventh hour, and was freely given. It cannot be said that its subject had borne the burden and heat of the day.

J.L.

P. S. Since the above was written, I have been indulged with a sight and examination of Miss Boothby's pocket Testament which is interleaved and marked throughout, and is now in the possession of a lady whose maternal grandmother was brought up by its original owner. This favour was, however, granted on condition that no public use should be made of the manuscript portions of the volume. I am, of course, unable to furnish your

readers with whatever might have been selected as a sequel to preceding notices.

It is advisable in this place to state, that if my publication in the Christian Observer of manuscripts connected with the Boothby and Fitzherbert families has been followed in any instance by dissatisfaction, I beg to allege in self-defence, that, in publishing papers of a remote date, the present writer has only obeyed the acknowledged law of biographical literature, by which the correspondence, for example, of eminent persons becomes a kind of public property. There are, indeed, notorious cases where the domestic feelings of survivors has been almost wantonly wounded. Boswell himself has been blamed, and very deservedly, for his indelicacy in this relation. But he repelled an accusation on such a score by saying, “ Can it be imagined that I would take the trouble to gather what grows on every hedge, because I have collected such fruits as the Nonpareil and the BON CHRETIEN*?" The latter fruit, I am confident, has been plucked on the present occasion; and it is hoped that the parties interested in the memory and reputation of Miss Hill Boothby will at length allow me to chide them as having indulged something like a spirit of monopoly. I have not been robbing an orchard, but bearing a cluster of grapes from the common vineyard of the Christian church.

REMARKS ON NO. XXV. OF THE
FAMILY LIBRARY.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer. ALTHOUGH I am aware that it is impossible for yourself, or for any other Christian journalist, or for your most vigilant correspondents, to notice a tenth part of what proceeds from the infidel press, or from what is sometimes worse-the sneers of practical Atheism under the guise of Christianity; I beg leave to solicit

* Vol. iii. p. 108.