vol. ii.

p. 198.

perly! I hope you gain ground on your affliction: I hope to Letters, overcome mine. You and Miss must comfort one another. May you long live happily together! I have nobody whom I expect to share my uneasiness; nor, if I could communicate it, would it be less. I give it little vent, and amuse it as I can. Let us pray for one another; and when we meet, we may try what fidelity and tenderness will do for us.

"There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow; but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved, nor will, by me at least, be thought worthy of esteem."

He had told Mr. Hoole that he wished to have a City Club, and asked him to collect one; but, said he, "Don't let them be patriots." The company were to-day very sensible, well-behaved men. I have preserved only two particulars of his conversation. He said he was glad Lord George Gordon had escaped, rather than that a precedent should be established for hanging a man for constructive treason, which, in consistency with his true, manly, constitutional toryism, he considered would be a dangerous engine of arbitrary power. And upon its being mentioned that an opulent and very indolent Scotch nobleman, who totally resigned the management of his affairs to a man of knowledge and abilities, had claimed some merit by saying, "The next best thing to managing a man's own affairs well is being sensible of incapacity, and not attempting it, but having full confidence in one who can do it:"-JOHNSON. "Nay, sir, this is paltry. There is a middle course. Let a man give application; and depend upon it he will soon get above a despicable state of helplessness, and attain the power of acting for himself."

On Saturday, April 7, I dined with him at Mr. Hoole's with Governour Bouchier and Captain Orme, both of whom had been long in the East Indies; and, being men of good sense and observation, were very

entertaining. Johnson defended the oriental regulation of different castes of men', which was objected to as totally destructive of the hopes of rising in society by personal merit. He showed that there was a principle in it sufficiently plausible by analogy. "We see," said he, "in metals that there are different species; and so likewise in animals, though one species may not differ very widely from another, as, in the species of dogs, the cur, the spaniel, the mastiff. The Bramins are the mastiffs of mankind." On Thursday, April 12, I dined with him at a bishop's, where were Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Berenger, and some more company. He had dined the day before at another bishop's. I have unfortunately recorded none of his conversation at the bishop's where we dined together: but I have preserved his ingenious defence of his dining twice abroad in Passion-week; a laxity in which I am convinced he would not have indulged himself at the time when he wrote his solemn paper in "The Rambler" upon that awful season. It appeared to me, that by being much more in company, and enjoying more luxurious living, he had contracted a keener relish for pleasure, and was consequently less rigorous in his religious rites. This he would not acknowledge; but he reasoned with admirable sophistry as follows: "Why, sir, a bishop's calling company together in this week

Rajapouts, the military caste; the Bramins, pacifick and abstemious.— KEARNEY.

2 [The only bishops at whose houses Johnson is recorded to have dined were Shipley of St. Asaph and Porteus of Chester, afterwards of London. By a letter post, April, 1782, it appears that he dined two consecutive days, in April, with the Bishops of St. Asaph's and Chester. It seems so unlikely that he should, in two succeeding Aprils, have dined successively with these two bishops, that the Editor suspected that the letter placed under the year 1782, but undated in Mrs. Piozzi's volume, really belonged to 1781, and referred to the dinners mentioned in the text; but the statement in that letter, that the second of May fell on a Thursday, fixes its date to 1782. The matter is of some little importance, for we had rather be assured that Bishop Porteus were not the bishop alluded to.-ED.]

is, to use the vulgar phrase, not the thing. But you must consider laxity is a bad thing; but preciseness is also a bad thing; and your general character may be more hurt by preciseness than by dining with a bishop in Passion-week. There might be a handle for reflection. It might be said, He refuses to dine with a bishop in Passion-week, but was three Sundays absent from church."" BOSWELL. "Very true, sir. But suppose a man to be uniformly of good conduct, would it not be better that he should refuse to dine with a bishop in this week, and so not encourage a bad practice by his example?" JOHNSON. "Why, sir, you are to consider whether you might not do more harm by lessening the influence of a bishop's character by your disapprobation in refusing him, than by going to him."

"TO MRS. LUCY PORTER, IN LICHFIELD.

"London, 12th April, 1781.

“DEAR MADAM,—Life is full of troubles. I have just lost my dear friend Thrale. I hope he is happy; but I have had a great loss. I am otherwise pretty well. I require some care of myself, but that care is not ineffectual; and when I am out of order, I think it often my own fault.

"The spring is now making quick advances. As it is the season in which the whole world is enlivened and invigorated, I hope that both you and I shall partake of its benefits. My desire is to see Lichfield; but being left executor to my friend, I know not whether I can be spared; but I will try, for it is now long since we saw one another; and how little we can promise ourselves many more interviews, we are taught by hourly examples of mortality. Let us try to live so as that mortality may not be an evil. Write to me soon, my dearest: your letters will give me great pleasure.

"I am sorry that Mr. Porter has not had his box; but by sending it to Mr. Mathias, who very readily undertook its conveyance, I did the best I could, and perhaps before now he has it.

"Be so kind as to make my compliments to my friends. I have a great value for their kindness, and hope to enjoy it before

summer is past. Do write to me. I am, dearest love, your most humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON.”

On Friday, April 13, being Good Friday, I went to St. Clement's church with him as usual. There I saw again his old fellow-collegian, Edwards, to whom I said, “I think, sir, Dr. Johnson and you meet only at church." "Sir," said he, "it is the best place we can meet in, except heaven, and I hope we shall meet there too." Dr. Johnson told me that there was very little communication between Edwards and him after their unexpected renewal of acquaintance. "But," said he, smiling, "he met me once and said, 'I am told you have written a very pretty book called "The Rambler."' I was unwilling that he should leave the world in total darkness, and sent him a set."

Mr. Berenger' visited him to-day, and was very pleasing. We talked of an evening society for conversation at a house in town, of which we were all members, but of which Johnson said, "It will never do, sir. There is nothing served about there; neither tea, nor coffee, nor lemonade, nor any thing whatever; and depend upon it, sir, a man does not love to go to a place from whence he comes out exactly as he went in." I endeavoured, for argument's sake, to maintain that men of learning and talents might have very good intellectual society, without the aid of any little gratifications of the senses. Berenger joined with Johnson, and said that without these any meeting would be dull and insipid. He would therefore have all the slight refreshments; nay, it would not be amiss to have some cold meat, and a

Richard Berenger, Esq., many years gentleman of the horse to his present majesty, and authour of "The History and Art of Horsemanship," in two volumes, 4to. 1771.-MALONE. [See ante, vol. ii. p. 84, and vol. iv. p. 120. -ED.]

bottle of wine upon a sideboard. "Sir," said Johnson to me, with an air of triumph, "Mr. Berenger knows the world. Every body loves to have good things furnished to them without any trouble. I told Mrs. Thrale once, that, as she did not choose to have card-tables, she should have a profusion of the best sweetmeats, and she would be sure to have company enough come to her." I agreed with my illustrious friend upon this subject; for it has pleased God to make man a composite animal, and where there is nothing to refresh the body, the mind will languish.

On Sunday, April 15, being Easter day, after solemn worship in St. Paul's church, I found him alone. Dr. Scott, of the Commons, came in. He talked of its having been said, that Addison wrote some of his best papers in "The Spectator" when warm with wine. Dr. Johnson did not seem willing to admit this. Dr. Scott, as a confirmation of it, related, that Blackstone, a sober man, composed his "Commentaries" with a bottle of port before him; and found his mind invigorated and supported in the fatigue of his great work, by a temperate use of it.

I told him, that in a company where I had lately been, a desire was expressed to know his authority for the shocking story of Addison's sending an execution into Steele's house'. "Sir," said he, “it is generally known; it is known to all who are acquainted with the literary history of that period: it is as well known as that he wrote 'Cato.' Mr. Thomas Sheridan once defended Addison to me, by alleging that he did it in order to cover Steele's goods from other creditors, who were going to seize them."

VOL. IV.

[See ante, p. 421 n.-ED.]

H H