"How long we shall stay at Oxford, or what we shall do when we leave it, neither Bozzy nor I have settled: he is for his part resolved to remove his family to London, and try his fortune at the English bar: let us all wish him success."]

In the midst of his own diseases and pains, he was ever compassionate to the distresses of others, and actively earnest in procuring them aid, as appears from a note to Sir Joshua Reynolds, of June, in these words: "I am ashamed to ask for some relief for a poor man, to whom I hope I have given what I can be expected to spare. The man importunes me, and the blow goes round. I am going to try another air on Thursday."

[The following letter from Miss ED. Reynolds shows that he was not a solicitor for the poor of his own acquaintance only. It seems to have been given to some poor woman as an introduction to Dr. Johnson:]

Reyn.

"Dover-street, July 9th. ["MY GOOD SIR,-I could not forMSS. bear to communicate to the poor woman the hope you had given me of using your interest with your friends to raise her a little sum to enable her to see her native country again; nor could I refuse to write a line to procure her the pleasure of the confirmation of that hope.

“I am, and always have been, very troublesome to you; but you are, and always have been, very good to your obliged humble servant,

"FRANCES REYNOLDS."]

He

herself in the coach with knotting.
would scarcely allow this species of employ-
ment any merit. "Next to mere idleness
(said he), I think knotting is to be reckoned
in the scale of insignificance; though I once
attempted to learn knotting 1: Dempster's
sister (looking to me) endeavoured to teach
me it, but I made no progress."

I was surprised at his talking without reserve in the publick post-coach of the state of his affairs: "I have (said he) about the world I think above a thousand pounds, which I intend shall afford Frank an annuity of seventy pounds a year." Indeed his openness with people at a first interview was remarkable. He said once to Mr. Langton, "I think I am like Squire Richard 2 in The Journey to London,' I'm never strange in a strange place." He was truly social. He strongly censured what is much too common in England among persons of condition,-maintaining an absolute silence when unknown to each other; as, for instance, when occasionally brought together in a room before the master or mistress of the house has appeared. "Sir, that is being so uncivilized as not to understand the common rights of humanity."

At the inn where we stopped he was exceedingly dissatisfied with some roast mutton which we had for dinner. The ladies, I saw, wondered to see the great philosopher, whose wisdom and wit they had been admiring all the way, get into ill-humour from such a cause. He scolded the waiter, saying, "It is as bad as bad can be: it is illfed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-drest."

He bore the journey very well, and seemed to feel himself elevated as he approached Oxford, that magnificent and venerable seat of learning, orthodoxy, and toryism. Frank came in the heavy coach, in readiness to attend him; and we were received with the most polite hospitality at the house of his old friend Dr. Adams, Master of Pembroke College, who had given us a kind invitation. Before we were set down, I communicated to Johnson my having engaged to return to London directly for the reason I have mentioned, but that I would hasten back to him again. He was pleased that I had made this journey merely to keep him company. He was easy and placid, with Dr. Adams, Mrs. and Miss Adams, and Mrs. Kennicot, widow

On Thursday, June 3, the Oxford post coach took us up in the morning at Boltcourt. The other two, passengers were Mrs. Beresford and her daughter, two very agreeable ladies from America: they were going to Worcestershire, where they then resided. Frank had been sent by his master the day before to take places for us; and I found from the way-bill that Dr. Johnson had made our names, be put down. Mrs. Beresford, who had read it, whispered me, "Is this the great Dr. Johnson?" I told her it was; so she was then prepared to listen. As she soon happened to mention, in a voice so low that Johnson did not hear it, that her husband had been a member of the American Congress, I cautioned her to beware of introducing that subject, as she must know how very violent Johnson was against the people of that country. He talked a great deal; but I am sorry I have preserved little of the conversation. Miss Beresford was so much charmed, that she said to me aside, "How he does talk! Every sentence is an essay." She amused | LAND]

1 [See ante, p. 149, n.; but this repetition of

the name renders the Editor doubtful as to the suggestion made in that note, though he cannot discover where or when Dr. Johnson could have been so familiarized with Mr. Dempster's family. -ED.]

2 [The remark is made by Miss Jenny, and not by her brother. It would have been ill suited to one who was originally described in the dramatis 66 personæ as a mere whelp."-J. H. MARK

of the learned Hebræan 1, who was here on a visit. He soon despatched the inquiries that were made about his illness and recovery by a short and distinct narrative, and then assuming a gay air, repeated from Swift, "Nor think on our approaching ills,

And talk of spectacles and pills."

6

Dr. Newton, the Bishop of Bristol, having been mentioned, Johnson, recollecting the manner in which he had been censured by that prelate 2, thus retaliated:-" Tom knew he should be dead before what he has said of me would appear. He durst not have printed it while he was alive." DR. ADAMS. I believe his Dissertations on the Prophecies' is his great work." JOHNSON. "Why, sir, it is Tom's great work; but how far it is great, or how much of it is Tom's, are other questions. I fancy a considerable part of it was borrowed." DR. ADAMS. "He was a very successful man." JOHNSON. "I don't think so, sir. He did not get very high. He was late in getting what he did get; and he did not get it by the best means. believe he was a gross flatterer."

I fulfilled my intention by going to London, and returned to Oxford on Wednesday

1 [See ante, vol. i. p. 171.-ED.]

He

the 9th of June, when I was happy to find myself again in the same agreeable circle at Pembroke College, with the comfortable prospect of making some stay. Johnson welcomed my return with more than ordinary glee.

He talked with great regard of the Honourable Archibald Campbell, whose character he had given at the Duke of Argyll's table when we were at Inverary 3, and at this time wrote out for me, in his own hand, a fuller account of that learned and venerable writer, which I have published in its proper place. Johnson made a remark this evening which struck me a good deal. "I never (said he) knew a nonjuror who could reason." Surely he did not mean to deny that faculty to many of their writers-to Hickes, Brett, and other eminent divines of that persuasion; and did not recollect that the seven bishops, so justly celebrated for their magnanimous resistance of arbitrary power, were yet nonjurors 5 to the new government. The nonjuring clergy of Scotland, indeed, who, excepting a few, have lately, by a sudden stroke, cut off all ties of allegiance to the house of Stuart, and resolved to pray for our present lawful sovereign by name, may be thought to have confirmed this remark; as it may be said,

3" Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides," ante, vol. i. P. 449.-BOSWELL.

66

66

2 Dr. Newton in his Account of his own Life, after animadverting upon Mr. Gibbon's History, says, Dr. Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets' afforded more amusement; but candour was much hurt 4 The Rev. Mr. Agutter has favoured me with and offended at the malevolence that predominates a note of a dialogue between Mr. John Henderson in every part. Some passages, it must be allowed, and Dr. Johnson on this topick, as related by Mr. are judicious and well written, but make not Henderson, and it is evidently so authentick that I sufficient compensation for so much spleen and ill-shall here insert it:-HENDERSON. "What do humour. Never was any biographer more sparing you think, sir, of William Law?" JOHNSON. of his praise, or more abundant in his censures. William Law, sir, wrote the best piece of paseemingly delights more in exposing blemishes, renetick divinity; but William Law was no reaHENDERSON. than in recommending beauties; slightly passes soner." Jeremy Collier, sir?" over excellences, enlarges upon imperfections, JOHNSON. Jeremy Collier fought without a and, not content with his own severe reflections, rival, and therefore could not claim the victory." revives old scandal, and produces large quotations Mr. Henderson mentioned Ken and Kettlewell; from the forgotten works of former criticks. His but some objections were made; at last he said, reputation was so high in the republick of letters,. "But, sir, what do you think of Lesley?" JOHNthat it wanted not to be raised upon the ruins of SON. "Charles Lesley I had forgotten. Lesley others. But these essays, instead of raising a was a reasoner, and a reasoner who was not to higher idea than was before entertained of his be reasoned against."-BoswELL. [Charles understanding, have certainly given the world a was the son of Dr. John Lesley, Bishop of worse opinion of his temper. The bishop was Clogher in Ireland. He was educated at Trinity therefore the more surprised and concerned for College, Dublin. Though zealous against popery his townsman, for he respected him not only for and King James's popish measures, he could not his genius and learning, but valued him much reconcile his conscience to the oaths to William for the more amiable part of his character- and Mary, and so became a nonjuror, of which his humanity and charity, his morality and party he was one of the chief literary and theological religion." The last sentence we may consider supports and ornaments. After many years of as the general and permanent opinion of Bishop exile, he returned to his native country, and died Newton; the remarks which precede it must, by in, 1722, at his own house at Glaslough, in the all who have read Johnson's admirable work, be county of Monaghan, where his descendants have imputed to the disgust and peevishness of old age. continued to reside. The present possessor, Mr. I wish they had not appeared, and that Dr. John- Charles Powell Leslie, his great grandson, has repson had not been provoked by them to express resented that county in several parliaments.-ED.] himself not in respectful terms of a prelate whose 5 [Mr. Roswell is mistaken: two of the seven labours were certainly of considerable advantage bishops (Lloyd, of St. Asaph's, and Trelawney) both to literature and religion.-BOSWELL. were not nonjurors.-ED.]

that the divine indefeasible hereditary right
which they professed to believe, if ever true,
must be equally true still. Many of my
readers will be surprised when I mention
that Johnson assured me he had never in
his life been in a nonjuring meeting-house.
Next morning at breakfast, he pointed
out a passage in Savage's "Wanderer,"
saying "These are fine verses."." If,"
said he, "I had written with hostility of
Warburton in my Shakspeare, I should
have quoted this couplet:

• Here Learning, blinded first, and then beguiled,
Looks dark as Ignorance, as Frenzy wild.'
You see they'd have fitted him to a T,"
(smiling.) DR. ADAMS. "But you did
not write against Warburton." JOHNSON.
"No, sir, I treated him with great respect
both in my preface and in my notes 1."

|

On the Roman Catholick religion he said, "If you join the papists externally, they will not interrogate you strictly as to your belief in their tenets. No reasoning papist believes every article of their faith. There is one side on which a good nian might be persuaded to embrace it. A good man of a timorous disposition, in great doubt of his acceptance with God, and pretty credulous, may be glad to be of a church where there are so many helps to get to heaven 4. I would be a papist if I could. I ality prevents me. I shall never be a pahave fear enough; but an obstinate rationpist 5, unless on the near approach of death, of which I have a very great terrour. wonder that women are not all papists." BOSWELL. "They are not more afraid of death than men are. JOHNSON. "Because they are less wicked." DR. ADAMS. "They are more pious." JOHNSON. “No, hang 'em, they are not more pious. Ả wicked fellow is the most pious when he takes to it. He'll beat you all at piety."

He argued in defence of some of the peculiar tenets of the church of Rome. As to the giving the bread only to the laity, he said, "They may think, that in what is merely ritual 6, deviations from the primitive mode may be admitted on the ground of convenience; and I think they are as well warranted to make this alteration, as we are to substitute sprinkling in the room of the ancient baptism 7. As to the invoca

Mrs. Kennicot spoke of her brother, the Reverend Mr. Chamberlayne, who had given up great prospects in the Church of England, on his conversion to the Roman Catholick faith. Johnson, who warmly admired every man who acted from a conscientious regard to principle, erroneous or not, exclaimed fervently, "God bless him." Mrs. Kennicot, in confirmation of Dr. Johnson's opinion that the present was not worse than former ages, mentioned that her brother assured her there was now less infidelity on the continent than there had been 2; Voltaire and Rousseau were less read. I asserted, from good authority, that Hume's infidelity was certainly less read. JOHNSON. "All infidel writers drop into oblivion when personal connexions and the floridness of novelty are gone; though now and then a foolish fellow, who thinks he can be witty upon them, may bring them again into notice. There will sometimes start up a college joker, who does not consider that what is a joke in a college will-ED.] not do in the world. To such defenders of religion I would apply a stanza of a poem which I remember to have seen in some old collection:

'Henceforth be quiet and agree,

Each kiss his empty brother: Religion scorns a foe like thee,

But dreads a friend like t' other.'

The point is well, though the expression is not correct: one, and not thee, should be opposed to t' other 3."

[See ante, p. 271.—ED.]

[A few years afforded lamentable evidence how utterly mistaken was this opinion.-ED.]

3 I have inserted the stanza as Johnson repeated it from memory, but I have since found the poem itself, in "The Foundling Hospital for Wit," printed at London, 1749. It is as follows: EPIGRAM, occasioned by a religious dispute at Bath. "On reason, faith, and mystery high. Two wits harangue the table;

B

-y believes he knows not why,
swears 'tis all a fable.
Peace, coxcombs, peace! and both agree!
N- -, kiss thy empty brother;
Religion laughs at foes like thee,

And dreads a friend like t' other."-Boswell.

[The disputants alluded to in this epigram are supposed to have been Bentley (the son of the doctor and the friend of Walpole) and Beau Nash.

[This facility, however it may, in their last moments, delude the timorous and credulous, is, as Jeremy Taylor observes, proporotinably injurious When addressing if previously calculated upon.

a convert to the Romish church, he says, "If I had a mind to live an evil life, and yet hope for heaven at last, I would be of your religion above any in the world."-Works, vol. xi. p. 190.ED.]

[See ante, vol. i. p. 97, where the reference to the 3d June, 1784, should have been to this day, the 10th.-ED.]

6 [The Bishop of Ferns very justly observes, that the sacrament is not merely ritual. Had it been an institution of the church of Rome, they might have modified it; but it was a solemn and specific ordinance of our Saviour himself, which o church could justifiably alter.-ED.]

7 [The Editor does not recollect any scriptural authority that primitive baptism should necessarily be by immersion. From the Acts, ii. 41., it may be inferred that 3000 persons were baptized in Jerusalem in one day, and the jailor of Philippi

tion of saints, he said, "Though I do not | why, should, in this world of imperfect think it authorised, it appears to me, that, knowledge, and therefore of wonder and 'the communion of saints' in the Creed mystery in a thousand instances, be contestmeans the communion with the saints in ed by some with an unthinking assurance heaven, as connected with 'The holy Catho- and flippancy. lick church 1.'" He admitted the influence of evil spirits upon our minds, and said, "Nobody who believes the New Testament can deny it."

I brought a volume of Dr. Hurd, the Bishop of Worcester's Sermons, and read to the company some passages from one of them, upon this text, "Resist the Devil, and he will fly from you." James iv. 7. I was happy to produce so judicious and elegant a supporter of a doctrine which, I know not

2

and his family were baptized hastily at night, and, as it would seem, within the purlieus of the prison (Acts, xvi. 33). These baptisms could hardly have been by immersion.-ED.]

Waller, in his "Divine Poesie," canto first, has the same thought finely expressed:

The church triumphant and the church below
In songs of praise their present union show:
Their joys are full, our expectation long;
In life we differ, but we join in song:
Angels and we, assisted by this art,

May sing together, though we dwell apart."-BOSWELL 2 The sermon thus opens:-" That there are angels and spirits good and bad; that at the head of these last there is ONE more considerable and malignant than the rest, who in the form or under the name of a serpent was deeply concerned in the fall of man, and whose head, as the pro

phetick language is, the Son of Man was one day to bruise; that this evil spirit, though that prophecy be in part completed, has not yet received his death's wound, but is still permitted, for ends un

After dinner, when one of us talked of there being a great enmity between Whig and Tory:-JOHNSON. Why, not so much, I think, unless when they come into competition with each other. There is none when they are only common acquaintance, none when they are of different sexes. A Tory will marry into a Whig family, and a Whig into a Tory family, without any reluctance. But, indeed, in a matter of much more concern than political tenets, and that is religion, men and women do not concern themselves much about difference of opinion; and ladies set no value on the moral character of men who pay their addresses to them: the greatest profligate will be as well received as the man of the greatest virtue, and this by a very good woman,. by a woman who says her prayers three times a day." Our. ladies endeavoured to defend their sex from this charge; but he roared them down! take Jonathan Wild as readily as St. Aus“No, no, a lady will tin, if he has threepence more; and, what is worse, her parents will give her to him. Women have a perpetual envy of our vices: choice, but because we restrict them; they they are less vicious than we, not from virtue is of more consequence to us than are the slaves of order and fashion; their

our own, so far as concerns this world."

Yes,

Miss Adams mentioned a gentleman of licentious character, and said, "Suppose I had a mind to marry that gentleman, would my parents consent?" JOHNSON. they 'd consent, and you'd go. You'd go, though they did not consent." MISS ADAMS., "Perhaps their opposing might make me go." JOHNSON. "O, very well; friend the Reverend Dr. Lort, of whom it may truly be said, Multis ille bonis flebilis occidit. It is remarkable that Waller, in his "Reflections on the several Petitions in that sacred Form of Devotion," has understood this in the same sense: "Guard us from all temptations of the FOE."-BOSWELL.

searchable to us, and in ways which we cannot particularly explain, to have a certain degree of power in this world, hostile to its virtue and happiness, and sometimes exerted with too much success; all this is so clear from Scripture, that no believer, unless he be first of all spoiled by philosophy and vain deceit, can possibly entertain a doubt of it." Having treated of possessions, his lordship says, "As I have no authority to affirm that there are now any such, so neither may I presume to say with confidence that there are not any." "But then, with regard to the influence of evil spirits at this day upon the SOULS of men, I shall take leave to be a great deal more peremptory. (Then, having stated the various proofs, he adds), All this, I say, is so manifest to every one who reads the scriptures, that, if we respect their authority, the question concerning the reality of the demoniack influence upon the minds of men is clearly determined." Let it be remembered, that these are not the words of an antiquated or obscure enthusiast, but of a learned and polite prelate now alive; and were spoken, not to a vulgar congregation, but to the Honour-present state surround us. I say, it is of late years able Society of Lincoln's Inn. His lordship in this sermon explains the words "deliver us from evil," in the Lord's Prayer, as signifying à request to be protected from "the evil one," that is, the Devil. This is well illustrated in a short but excellent Commentary by my late worthy

[Another distinguished prelate, when addressing the same learned society a few years ago (1822) on this important subject, thus expressed himself: "The text (Ephesians, vi. 11, 12) is extremely important in determining a question which has of late years arisen among christians concerning the existence of that person, or those persons, to whose influence is ascribed so large a portion of the sin and misery which in our

that this controversy has arisen, because it is certain that during more than one thousand seven hundred years the christian world (however otherwise divided) had on this point no difference of opinion."-Heber's Sermons, preached in England. Sermon IV.-J. H. MARKLAND.]

2 [Miss Adams married, in July, 1788, Benjamin Hyett, Esq. of Painswiek, Gloucestershire.-J. H. MARKLAND.] HALL.]