68. Avarice. Avarice was a vice against which, however, I never much heard Mr. Johnson declaim, till one represented it to him connected with cruelty, or some such disgraceful companion. "Do not," said he, "discourage your children from hoarding, if they have a taste to it: whoever lays up his penny rather than part with it for a cake, at least is not the slave of gross appetite; and shows besides a preference, always to be esteemed, of the future to the present moment. Such a mind may be made a good one; but the natural spendthrift, who grasps his pleasures greedily and coarsely, and cares for nothing but immediate indulgence, is very little to be valued above a negro." 69. Friendship. We were speaking of a gentleman who loved his friend: "Make him prime minister," says Johnson, "and see how long his friend will be remembered." But he had a rougher answer for me, when I commended a sermon preached by an intimate acquaintance of our own at the trading end of the town. "What was the subject, Madam," says Dr. Johnson?" Friendship, Sir," replied I. " Why now, is it not strange that a wise man, like our dear little Evans, should take it in his head to preach on such a subject, in a place where no one can be thinking of it?" Why, what are they thinking upon, Sir," said I? "Why, the men are thinking of their money, I suppose, and the women are thinking of their mops." 66 70. Laced Coats.-Gentlemen. Dr. Johnson did not like that the upper ranks should be dignified with the name of the world. Sir Joshua Reynolds said one day, that nobody wore laced coats now; and that once every body wore them. "See now," says Johnson, "how absurd that is; as if the bulk of man kind consisted of fine gentlemen that came to him to sit for their pictures. If every man who wears a laced coat (that he can pay for) was extirpated, who would miss them?" With all this haughty contempt of gentility, no praise was more welcome to Dr. Johnson, than that which he said had the notions or manners of a gentleman: which character I have heard him define with accuracy, and describe with elegance. "Officers," he said, were falsely supposed to have the carriage of gentlemen; whereas no profession left a stronger brand behind it than that of a soldier; and it was the essence of a gentleman's character to bear the visible mark of no profession whatever." 66 71. Molly Aston. 66 Molly Aston," says Dr. Johnson, " was a beauty and a scholar, and a wit and Whig; and she talked all in praise of liberty: and so I made this epigram upon her. She was the loveliest creature I ever saw ! 'Liber ut esse velim, suasisti, pulchra Maria, Ut maneam liber pulchra Maria, vale!'" "Will it do this way in English, Sir?” said I, "Persuasions to freedom fall oddly from you; If freedom we seek — fair Maria, adieu!" (1) "It will do well enough," replied he, " but it is translated by a lady, and the ladies never loved Molly Aston." I asked him what his wife thought of this attachment? "She was jealous, to be sure," said he, 66 and teased me sometimes when I would let her; and one day, as a fortune-telling gipsy passed us when we were walking out in company with two or three friends in the country, she made the wench look at my hand, but soon repented her curiosity; for, says the gipsy, 'Your heart is divided, Sir, between a Betty and a (1) [See antè, Vol. VII. p. 200.] Molly Betty loves you best, but you take most delight in Molly's company.' When I turned about to laugh, I saw my wife was crying. Pretty charmer! she had no reason!" 72. Mrs. Fitzherbert. It was, I believe, long after the currents of life had driven him to a great distance from this lady, that he spent much of his time with Mrs. Fitzherbert, of whom he always spoke with esteem and tenderness, and with a veneration very difficult to deserve. “That woman," said he, "loved her husband as we hope and desire to be loved by our guardian angel. Fitzherbert was a gay, good-humoured fellow, generous of his money and of his meat, and desirous of nothing but cheerful society among people distinguished in some way, in any way I think; for Rousseau and St. Austin would have been equally welcome to his table and to his kindness: the lady, however, was of another way of thinking; her first care was to preserve her husband's soul from corruption; her second, to keep his estate entire for their children and I owed my good reception in the family to the idea she had entertained, that I was fit company for Fitzherbert, whom I loved extremely. They dare not,' said she, 'swear, and take other conversation-liberties before you.' I asked if her husband returned her regard? "He felt her influence too powerfully," replied Mr. Johnson: "no man will be fond of what forces him daily to feel himself inferior. She stood at the door of her paradise in Derbyshire, like the angel with the flaming sword, to keep the devil at a distance. But she was not immortal, poor dear! she died, and her husband felt at once afflicted and released." I inquired if she was handsome? "She would have been handsome for a queen," replied the panegyrist; "her beauty had more in it of majesty than of attraction, more of the dignity of virtue than the vivacity of wit." 73. Miss Boothby. The friend of this lady, Miss Boothby, succeeded her in the management of Mr. Fitzherbert's family, and in the esteem of Dr. Johnson; though he told me she pushed her piety to bigotry, her devotion to enthusiasm ; that she somewhat disqualified herself for the duties of this life, by her perpetual aspirations after the next: such was, however, the purity of her mind, he said, and such the graces of her manner, that Lord Lyttelton and he used to strive for her preference with an emulation that occasioned hourly disgust, and ended in lasting animosity. "You may see," said he to me, when the Poets' Lives were printed, "that dear Boothby is at my heart still. (1) She would delight in that fellow Lyttelton's company though, all that I could do; and I cannot (1) Notwithstanding the mention of the "heart" in this anecdote and in Johnson's letter to this lady in January 1755 (see antè, Vol. VIII. p. 28.), there seems no reason to suppose that (as Miss Seward asserted) this was really an affair of the heart "an early attachment." The other letters, of which Boswell says that "their merit is not so apparent" (but which will be hereafter given), are written in still warmer terms of affection: Miss Boothby is " a sweet angel," and "a dear angel," and his "heart is full of tenderness;" but when the whole series of letters are read, it will be seen that the friendship began late in the life of both parties; that it was wholly platonic, or, to speak more properly, spiritual; and that the letters in which these very affectionate expressions occur were written when Johnson believed that Miss Boothby was dying. It must also be observed, that it is very unlikely that Johnson should seriously confess that he had been so unjust to Lord Lyttelton from any private pique; and it seems, by his letters to Mrs. Thrale (April 1779), that he had no such feeling towards Lyttelton, and that he had applied to his lordship's friends to write the life; and finally, it is to be noted, Lord Lyttelton married his second lady in 1749, and Johnson does not seem to have known Miss Boothby till 1754. In short, I have no doubt, nor will any one who reads the letters and considers how little personal intercourse there could have been between Miss Boothby and Dr. Johnson, that the whole story is a mistake, founded, perhaps, on some confusion between Miss Boothby and Miss Aston, and countenanced, it must be admitted, by the warm expressions of the letters. .C. forgive even his memory the preference given by a mind like hers." I have heard Baretti say, that when this lady died, Dr. Johnson was almost distracted with his grief; and that the friends about him had much ado to calm the violence of his emotion. 74. Death of Mrs. Johnson. Dr. Taylor too related once to Mr. Thrale and me, that when he lost his wife, the negro Francis ran away, though in the middle of the night, to Westminster, to fetch Dr. Taylor to his master, who was all but wild with excess of sorrow, and scarce knew him when he arrived after some minutes, however, the doctor proposed their going to prayers, as the only rational method of calming the disorder this misfortune had occasioned in both their spirits. Time, and resignation to the will of God, cured every breach in his heart before I made acquaintance with him, though he always persisted in saying he never rightly recovered the loss of his wife. It is in allusion to her that he records the observation of a female critic, as he calls her, in Gay's Life; and . the lady of great beauty and elegance, mentioned in the criticisms upon Pope's epitaphs, was Miss Molly Aston. The person spoken of in his strictures upon Young's poetry, is the writer of these Anecdotes. 75. Improvvisation. - Metastasio. Mr. Johnson did indeed possess an almost Tuscan power of improvvisation: when he called to my daughter, who was consulting with a friend about a new gown and dressed hat she thought of wearing at an assembly, thus suddenly, while she hoped he was not listening to their conversation, "Wear the gown, and wear the hat, Snatch thy pleasures while they last; Soon those nine lives would be past." |