"DEAR SIR,

"TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.

Ashbourne, Sept. 11, 1777.

"I write to be left at Carlisle, as you direct me; but you cannot have it. Your letter, dated Sept. 6, was not at this place till this day, Thursday, Sept. 11; and I hope you will be here before this is at Carlisle.' However, what you have not going, you may have returning; and as I believe I shall not love you less after our interview, it will then be as true as it is now, that I set a very high value upon your friendship, and count your kindness as one of the chief felicities of my life. Do not fancy that an intermission of writing is a decay of kindness. No man is always in a disposition to write; nor has any man at all times something to say.

"That distrust which intrudes so often on your mind is a mode of melancholy which, if it be the business of a wise man to be happy, it is foolish to indulge; and, if it be a duty to preserve our faculties entire for their proper use, it is criminal. Suspicion is very often an useless pain. From that, and all other pains, I wish you free and safe; for I am, dear Sir,

"Most affectionately yours,

'SAM. JOHNSON."

1 It so happened, the letter was forwarded to my house at Edinburgh.-BOSWELL.

BOSWELL'S ARRIVAL AT ASHBOURNE-GRIEF FOR THE LOSS OF FRIENDS"JOURNEY TO THE WESTERN ISLANDS"-ASHBOURNE SCHOOL-POOR CURATESJOHNSON'S ZEALOUS INTERFERENCE AND CORRESPONDENCE ON BEHALF OF DR. DODD-PETITION OF THE CITY OF LONDON IN HIS FAVOUR-DODD'S PETITION TO THE KING-MR. JENKINSON-MR. FITZHERBERT-DR. TAYLOR-HAMILTON'S POEMS THE REV. MR. SEWARD-JOHNSON'S OPINIONS OF HUME-GEN. PAOLI'S SENTIMENTS ON THE FEAR OF DEATH-DR. BUTTER-DUTIES OF A BIOGRAPHER -THE STUART FAMILY--COXETER'S COLLECTIONS OF THE POETS-JOHNSON'S CRITICISMS ON LYRIC POETRY.

N Sunday evening, Sept. 14, I arrived at Ashbourne, and drove

ON Sentir's door; Dr. Johnson and he appeared

before I had got out of the post-chaise, and welcomed me cordially.

I told them that I had travelled all the preceding night, and gone to bed at Leek in Staffordshire; and that when I rose to go to church in the afternoon I was informed there had been an earthquake, of which, it seems, the shock had been felt in some degree at Ashbourne.

1 The Rev. Dr. Taylor was Prebendary of Westminster, and an old friend and schoolfellow of Dr. Johnson's. The eloquent sermons which he preached and published were generally attributed to the pen of Dr. Johnson. Bishop Porteus, in a letter to Dr. Beattie, dated 1788, thus notices a posthumous volume of Dr. Taylor's sermons:-"I will venture to say that there is not a man in England, who knows anything of Dr. Johnson's peculiarities of style, sentiment, and composition, that will not instantly pronounce these sermons to be his. Indeed they are (some of them at least), in his very best manner; and Taylor was no more capable of writing them, than of making an epic poem."-ED

JOHNSON : Sir, it will be much exaggerated in popular talk: for, in the first place, the common people do not accurately adapt their thoughts to the objects; nor, secondly, do they accurately adapt their words to their thoughts: they do not mean to lie; but, taking no pains to be exact, they give you very false accounts. A great part of their language is proverbial. If any thing rocks at all, they say it rocks like a cradle; and in this way they go on."

The subject of grief for the loss of relations and friends being introduced, I observed that it was strange to consider how soon it in general wears away. Dr. Taylor mentioned a gentleman of the neighbourhood as the only instance he had ever known of a person who had endeavoured to retain grief. He told Dr. Taylor, that after his lady's death, which affected him deeply, he resolved that the grief, which he cherished with a kind of sacred fondness, should be lasting; but that he found he could not keep it long. JOHNSON: "All grief for what cannot in the course of nature be helped soon wears away; in some sooner indeed, in some later; but it never continues very long, unless where there is madness, such as will make a man have pride so fixed in his mind, as to imagine himself a king; or any other passion in an unreasonable way: for all unnecessary grief is unwise, and therefore will not long be retained by a sound mind. If, indeed, the cause of our grief is occasioned by our own misconduct, if grief is mingled with remorse of conscience, it should be lasting." BOSWELL: " But, Sir, we do not approve of a man who very soon forgets the loss of a wife or a friend." JOHNSON : 'Sir, we disapprove of him, not because he soon forgets his grief; for the sooner it is forgotten the better, but because we suppose, that if he forgets his wife or his friend soon, he has not had much affection for them."

66

I was somewhat disappointed in finding that the edition of the English Poets, for which he was to write Prefaces and Lives, was not an undertaking directed by him: but that he was to furnish a Preface and Life to any poet the booksellers pleased. I asked him if he would do this to any dunce's works, if they asked him. JOHNSON: "Yes, Sir; and say he was a dunce." My friend seemed now not much to relish talking of this edition.

66

On Monday, September 15, Dr. Johnson observed that everybody commended such parts of his " Journey to the Western Islands," as were in their own way. 'For instance," said he, “Mr. Jackson (the all-knowing) told me there was more good sense upon trade in it, than he should hear in the House of Commons in a year, except from Burke. Jones commended the part which treats of language; Burke that which describes the inhabitants of mountainous countries."

After breakfast, Johnson carried me to see the garden belonging to the school of Ashbourne, which is very prettily formed upon a bank, rising gradually behind the house. The Reverend Mr. Langley, the head-master, accompanied us.

While we sat basking in the sun upon a seat here, I introduced a common subject of complaint, the very small salaries which many curates have, and I maintained that no man should be invested with the character of a clergyman, unless he has a security for such an income as will enable him to appear respectable; that, therefore, a clergyman should not be allowed to have a curate, unless he gives him a hundred pounds a year; if he cannot do that, let him perform the duty himself." JOHNSON: "To be sure, Sir, it is wrong that any clergyman should be without a reasonable income; but as the church revenues were sadly diminished at the Reformation, the clergy who have livings cannot afford, in many instances, to give good salaries to curates, without leaving themselves too little; and if no curate were to be permitted unless he had a hundred pounds a-year, their number would be very small, which would be a disadvantage, as then there would not be such choice in the nursery for the church, curates being candidates for the higher ecclesiastical offices, according to their merit and good behaviour." He explained the system of the English hierarchy exceedingly well. "It is not thought fit," said he, "to trust a man with the care of a parish till he has given proof as a curate that he shall deserve such a trust." This is an excellent theory: and if the practice were according to it, the church of England would be admirable indeed. However, as I have heard Dr. Johnson observe as to the universities, bad practice does not infer that the constitution is bad.

We had with us at dinner several of Dr. Taylor's neighbours, good civil gentlemen, who seemed to understand Dr. Johnson very well, and not to consider him in the light that a certain person did, who being struck, or rather stunned by his voice and manner, when he was afterwards asked what he thought of him, answered, "He's a tremendous companion."

Johnson told me, that "Taylor was a very sensible acute man, and had a strong mind; that he had great activity in some respects, and yet such a sort of indolence, that if you should put a pebble upon his chimney-piece you would find it there, in the same state, a year

afterwards."

And here is a proper place to give an account of Johnson's humane and zealous interference in behalf of the Reverend Dr. William Dodd, formerly Prebendary of Brecon, and Chaplain in Ordinary to his Majesty; celebrated as a very popular preacher, an, encourager of charitable institutions, and author of a variety of works, chiefly theological. Having unhappily contracted expensive habits of living, partly occasioned by licentiousness ofmanners, he in an evil hour, when pressed by want of money, and dreading an exposure of his circumstances, forged a bond, of which he attempted to avail himself to support his credit, flattering himself with hopes that he might be able to repay its amount without being detected. The person, whose name he thus rashly

and criminally presumed to falsify, was the Earl of Chesterfield, to whom he had been tutor, and who he perhaps, in the warmth of his feelings, flattered himself would have generously paid the money in case of an alarm being taken, rather than suffer him to fall a victim to the dreadful consequences of violating the law against forgery, the most dangerous crime in a commercial country; but the unfortunate divine had the mortification to find that he was mistaken. His noble pupil appeared against him, and he was capitally convicted.1

Johnson told me that Dr. Dodd was very little acquainted with him, having been but once in his company, many years previous to this period (which was precisely the state of my own acquaintance with Dodd); 2 but in his distress he bethought himself of Johnson's persuasive power of writing, if haply it might avail to obtain for him the royal mercy. He did not apply to him directly, but, extraordinary as it may seem, through the late Countess of Harrington, who wrote a letter to Johnson, asking him to employ his pen in favour of Dodd. Mr. Allen, the printer, who was Johnson's landlord and next neighbour in Bolt-court, and for whom he had much kindness, was one of Dodd's friends, of whom, to the credit of humanity be it recorded, that he had many who did not desert him, even after his infringement of the law had reduced him to the state of a

DR. DODD.

1 There are many acts of Dr. Dodd's life, which appear not only indiscreet but scandalous. He had been one of the King's chaplains, but was dismissed for an attempt at simony. He married a woman of very inferior station, and of equivocal character, Mary Perkins, who died mad in 1784. At the time when Johnson took so deep an interest in obtaining his pardon, Dodd was in his 49th year.-ED.

The

2 It has been much doubted whether they were ever in each others company. question, however, is set at rest by the publication of a letter from Dodd, in 1750, to the Rev. Dr. Parkhurst, in which he mentions their meeting, and thus characteristically describes the great leviathan of literature:-"He is of all others the oddest and most peculiar fellow I ever saw! He is six feet high, has a violent convulsion in his head, and his eyes are distorted. He speaks roughly and loudly, listens to no man's opinions, thoroughly pertinacious of his own. Good sense flows from him in all he utters, and he seems possessed of a prodigious fund of knowledge, which he is not at all reserved in communicating; but in a manner so obstinate, ungenteel, and boorish, as renders it disagreeable and dissatisfactory. In short, it is impossible for words to describe him. He is a man of most universal and surprising genius, but in himself particular beyond expression."-ED.

8 Caroline, eldest daughter of Charles Fitzroy, Duke of Grafton, and wife of William, the second Earl of Harrington.-MALONE.