DR. ADAMS; THE 'PRAYERS AND MEDITATIONS.' 395

I have thought of getting together all the books of prayers which I could, selecting those which should appear to me the best, putting out some, inserting others, adding some prayers of my own, and prefixing a discourse on prayer." We all now gathered about him, and two or three of us at a time joined in pressing him to execute this plan. He seemed to be a little displeased at the manner of our importunity, and in great agitation called out, "Do not talk thus of what is so awful. I know not what time God will allow me in this world. There are many things which I wish to do." Some of us persisted, and Dr Adams said, "I never was more serious about anything in my life." JOHNSON: "Let me alone, let me alone: I am overpowered." And then he put his hands before his face, and reclined for some time upon the table.' On Feb. 17, 1785, two months after Johnson's death, Dr Adams wrote to Boswell: 'His last visit was, I believe, to my house, which he left after a stay of four or five days. We had much serious talk together, for which I ought to be the better as long as I live. You will remember some discourse which we had in the summer upon the subject of prayer, and the difficulty of this sort of composition. He reminded me of this, and of my having wished him to try his hand, and to give us a specimen of the style and manner that he approved. He added that he was now in a right frame of mind, and as he could not possibly employ his time better he would set in earnest about it. But I find upon enquiry that no papers of this sort were left behind him, except a few short ejaculatory forms suitable to his present situation.' Boswell remarks: 'Dr Adams had not then received accurate information on this subject; for it has since appeared that various prayers had been composed by him at different periods, which, intermingled with pious resolutions and some short notes of his life, were entitled by him Prayers and Meditations, and have, in pursuance of his earnest requisition, in the hopes of doing good, been published, with a judicious and well-written preface by the reverend Mr Strahan, to whom he delivered them.'

Dr. Adams, however, wrote (Oxford, Oct. 22, 1785) to the Gentleman's Magazine that he had never seen the book before publication, and had he been consulted would certainly have given his voice against it. Mr. Strahan in his preface says that it was Adams' repeated request which at first suggested to Johnson the design

'to revise these pious effusions and bequeath them, with enlargements, to the use and benefit of others. Infirmities, however, now growing fast upon him, he at length changed this design, and determined to give the Manuscripts, without revision, in charge to me. Accordingly one morning, on my visiting him by desire at an early hour, he put these Papers into my hands, with instructions for committing them to the Press, and with a promise to prepare a sketch of his own life to accompany them. But the performance of this promise also was prevented, partly by the hasty destruction of some private memoirs which be afterwards lamented, and partly by that incurable sickness which soon ended in his dissolution. . . .

396 LIGHTFOOT; SERGROVE; SIR A. B. FAULKNER.

That the authenticity of this Work may never be called in question, the original manuscript will be deposited in the Library of Pembroke College in Oxford. Dr Bray's Associates are to receive the profits of the First Edition, by the Author's appointment; and any further advantages that accrue will be distributed among his poor relations.'

The Prayers and Meditations seems to me the most pathetic book of the eighteenth century, laying bare as it does the weakness of the strong, the inward agonizing of the Hercules of moralists, the tenderness, the humility, the simplicity, of that most human of despots. It is also a locus classicus for prayer for the dead, fasting, and other points of church practice in the time of George III. Adams no doubt felt the sacredness of such a self-pourtrayal, but we are grateful to him for being the unwilling cause of the book being published, as well as the MS. preserved'.

A Gloucestershire botanist-divine was JOHN LIGHTFOOT (matr. 1753; B.A. 1756; M.A. 1766), Fellow of the Royal and Linnaean Societies. He held various preferments in Hants and Notts, and died Feb. 20, 1788.

Adams was succeeded, Jan. 28, 1789, by a descendant of Richard Tesdale, the co-Founder's guardian, WILLIAM SERGROVE, who entered from St. Paul's School, Nov. 3, 1762, aged 16 (son of Thomas Sergrove of London); B.A. 1766; M.A. 1769; B.D. 1778; D.D. 1789. Rector of St. Aldate's 1774-89; Vicar of Penmark with Llanwit Major and Lliswarney, in the diocese of Llandaff. He died in London, April 16, 1796, aged forty-nine.

Before closing this chapter mention should be made of Sir ARTHUR BROOKE FAULKNER, born in 1779, who, after studying at Dublin and Cambridge, took M.A. and M.D. from Pembroke July 12, 1806. He was Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Physician in Ordinary to H. R. H. the Duke of Sussex, and Physician to the Forces. He served with the army in Spain, Holland and Malta. Knighted 1815; died May 23, 1845

1 Dr. Adams married, Jan. 12, 1742, Sarah, daughter of Thomas Hunt of Boreatton, Salop, esq. Their daughter, Johnson's vivacious young friend, was married in 1788 to Mr. Benjamin Hyett of Painswick House. She died in 1804 without issue, her husband's estates being bequeathed to her father's nephew Francis Adams, who took the name and arms of Hyett in 1815. Mr. Francis Adams Hyett, the present owner of Painswick House, possesses a picture of Dr. Adams by Opie, a copy of which, presented by Mr. FREDERICK BARLOW DE SAUSMAREZ (Scholar 1868-73; H. M. Inspector of Schools 1877), now hangs in the Hall. Mr. Hyett also has a pencil-sketch of Johnson drawn by Miss Adams on one occasion that Johnson visited the College. This was exhibited by Mr. de Sausmarez at the Dinner of past and present members of the College 'Johnson' Society in celebration of its 500th meeting, on June 23, 1896.

CHAPTER XXXI.

JOHN HENDERSON-'A FORGOTTEN GENIUS.'

JOHNSON'S room in the tower was occupied half a century after him by the Boy-Professor,' an eccentric young man of extraordinary parts and precocity, JOHN HENDERSON, called the Irish Crichton. He was born March 27, 1757, at Ballygarran, of pious and respectable parents, brought to England, and sent to Wesley's school at Kingswood, where he received a small school education,' and became himself, at the age of eight, a teacher of Latin. At twelve years we find him teaching Greek and Latin at Trevecca College, then governed by J. W. Fletcher, afterwards Vicar of Madeley. Two years later Mr. Fletcher was forced to leave, and Henderson retired to his father's house near Bristol, where he both studied and gave lessons. At the age of twenty-two he accidentally in a stage-coach met Dean Tucker, who was so astonished by his conversation that he wrote to Henderson's father urging that he should be sent to the University, and with the letter sent a gift of more than £150 to be expended on his education. This kind dignitary said afterwards that whenever he was in the company of young Henderson he considered himself as a scholar in the presence of his tutor.' It appears from Hannah More's Life1 that this present was augmented by a subscription. Accordingly on April 6, 1781, John Henderson matriculated at Pembroke. Here his unquenchable thirst for knowledge, vast powers of application, and amazing memory gave him an encyclopædic insight into the various branches of literature and science, his mind retaining and accurately arranging accumulated stores of varied learning. Besides 'the obsolete English writers,' on which he discoursed with cool and sententious eloquence,' he was skilled in Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian and German literature, conversing fluently in all these tongues. Indeed he could not only assume the dialect of every nation in Europe, but the accents of particular districts so completely that he might have passed for an inhabitant of either.' To Rosicrucianism, demonology, and midnight research for the philosopher's

1 Vol. i. p. 194.

398

JOHN HENDERSON.

stone, which caused it to be whispered in the University that he had communion with ghostly and dark powers, he added scholastic divinity, metaphysics, law, chemistry, mathematics, and a practical acquaintance with medicine. During a fever which raged in Oxford the young student practised gratuitously among the poor, sitting all night with them and selling even his Polyglot Bible to buy drugs. He is said to have saved many lives. Not only were his liberality and humanity without measure or prudence, but his panegyrist ascribes to him 'a general blaze of merit and virtue.' He does not, however, deny that Henderson gave way to at any rate occasional intemperance, or, as a hostile critic in the Gentleman's Magazine puts it, 'while he "drank large libations near the well-spring of truth," he dashed them too copiously with another liquor not less intoxicating.' Henderson had from the first been known as a man of whimsical habits. A contemporary at the College writes:

'I had never seen Mr H. before he entered at Pembroke College, though his fame had previously reached my ears. One morning, while I was occupied in my apartments at this College, I was surprized by the unexpected appearance of the joint-tutors of our society, introducing to me a stranger who from the singularity of his dress and the uncouthness of his aspect (I speak not with any disrespect) attracted my notice in an uncommon degree. His clothes were made in a fashion peculiar to himself; he wore no stock or neckcloth; his buckles were so small as not to exceed the dimensions of an ordinary knee-buckle, at a time when very large buckles were in vogue. Though he was then 24 years of age, he wore his hair like that of a school boy of six. This stranger was no less a person than M2 H., who had that morning been enrolled in our fraternity, and had been recommended to apartments situated exactly under mine 2. ... Mr H. passing some hours of that day with me, I was gratified with a rich feast of intellectual entertainment. The extent and variety of his knowledge, the intrinsic politeness of his manners, his inexhaustible fund of humours and anecdote, concurred to instruct, please, and amuse me. From this period I was frequently honored with the society of Mr Henderson.'

After eulogizing Henderson's many endearing virtues, he proceeds:

'His mode of life was singular. He generally retired to rest about day-break and rose in the afternoon; a practice however that was frequently interrupted by the occasional attendance which he was obliged to give at the morning service of the college chapel. He spent a great part of the day in smoking, and, except when in company, he usually read while he smoked.'

1 'C. C.' (Charles Coote) in the Gentleman's Magazine, lix. p. 295, April 3, 1789. 2 From this, and the allusion on p. 399 to the pump, I gather that Henderson did not occupy Johnson's chamber on first coming to the College.

'A FORGOTTEN GENIUS.'

Agutter tells us that before going to rest Henderson

399

'used to strip himself naked as low as the waist, and taking his station at a pump near his room would completely sluice his head and the upper part of his body; after which he would pump over his shirt so as to make it perfectly wet, and, putting it on in that condition, would immediately go to bed. This he jocularly termed "an excellent cold bath."'

On one occasion he ate nothing for five days. To relieve pain he indulged excessively in opium. Shenstone had eschewed the periwig of his day. Henderson objected to powder.

'He would never suffer his head to be strewed with white dust (to use his own expression), dashed with pomatum, or distorted by the curling irons. Though under two and thirty years of age at his death, he walked, when he appeared in publick, with a most apparent caution and solemnity, as if he had been enfeebled by the co-operation of age and disease.'

His friend, Hannah More, whom he helped Johnson to lionize round the College, deplored his unprofitable way of life. One righteous week,' he told her, 'would restore me.' But he could not go seven long days without his drug. In a letter of entreating sympathy she yet struggled to save him. The non-fulfilment of the hopes formed for him was 'one of the heaviest disappointments met with in life. The writer of an article called 'A Forgotten Genius' in the Speaker of June 1, 1895, thinks that there are in the following words a hint of what might have been :-'If you had not estranged yourself from the society of our family, you would have found a friendship that neglect has not been able to destroy. Of Patty you know this to be true. Of myself I feel that it is so.' Patty was a younger Miss More. Wesley, in his Journal, remarks that with as great talents as most men in England, he had lived two and thirty years and done just nothing.' It should be said, however, that, while he was at Oxford, a number of writings which he had left in his father's house at Hanham, in an unlocked trunk, were used by a maid to light fires with. His conversation was wonderfully sprightly as well as learned, and he had a gift of good-natured mimicry, due to the acuteness of his memory and the extended modulation of his voice, which is said to have been fairly astonishing. A German fellowstudent, coming into a room where Henderson was taking him off, was downright frightened, and avowed he had thought he heard himself speaking at a distance. Johnson, in his old age, conversed with the