insight, one wonders, or only to supreme impertinence? Call the widowed man's prayer for his dead wife love, and not superstition, and then it will seem beautiful in our eyes. Beautiful, and not wholly unintelligible; for, "Love does not aim simply at the conscious good of the beloved object: it is not satisfied without perfect loyalty of heart; it aims at its own completeness."

"April 23, 1753. I know not whether I do not too much indulge the vain longings of affection; but I hope they intenerate my heart, and that when I die like my Tetty, this affection will be acknowledged in a happy interview, and that in the meantime I am incited by it to piety. I will, however, not deviate too much from common and received methods of devotion."

And then all his own little occasional faults of temper would come back upon the tender-hearted, large-souled man, as grievous offences hardly to be forgiven: but he never blamed the dead. Here is an extract from one of his prayers uttered about a year after his wife's decease :

"O Lord, who givest the grace of repentance, and hearest the prayers of the penitent, grant that by true contrition I may obtain forgiveness of all the sins committed, and of all duties neglected, in my union with the wife whom thou hast taken from me; for the neglect of joint devotion, patient exhortation, and mild instruction."

Johnson's faults, so far at least as they affected his wife, never lay about the roots of his character; that is abundantly evident.

"And, O Lord, so far as it may be lawful in me, I commend to thy fatherly goodness the soul of my departed wife; beseeching thee to grant her whatever is best in her present state, and finally to receive her to eternal happiness."

"Can we believe that the dear dead are gone?"

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JOHNSON'S HOUSEHOLD.

CHAPTER VII.

JOHNSON'S HOUSEHOLD HIS FRIENDS-VISIT TO OXFORD.

(1752-1754-)

SHORTLY before this sad event, Mrs. Williams, daughter of a Welsh physician, and a woman of some parts, had come to London in hopes of being cured of a cataract in both her eyes. She afterwards became totally blind. While Mrs. Johnson lived, this lady had been received as a constant visitor of the family; and now, after his wife's death, Johnson gave her an apartment in the house, which she occupied till 1758, when Johnson removed to Gray's Inn, and she again went into lodgings. At a still subsequent period she once more became an inmate with our Author in Johnson's Court, remaining with him from that time forward to her death.

Another humble friend, Mr. Robert Levett, an obscure physician practising among the poorer classes, was favoured in the same remarkable way; had an apartment in Johnson's house, and waited upon him every morning through the whole course of his breakfast, which was both late and long-continued. Johnson had such an inordinately high opinion of his poor friend's abilities that he had been heard to say, he should not be satisfied though attended by the whole College of Physicians, if Mr. Levett were not among them. What a strange family group! Rough, impetuous, making no fuss about his good deeds, and looking for no very high returns, this man gathers the poor and the needy and the otherwise forsaken round his board: drawn to them, as they were to him, by the attractive power of a kind heart. When Mr. Levett was mentioned on one occasion, and some surprise expressed at Johnson's fondness for him, Goldsmith remarked, "He is poor and

honest, and that is recommendation enough to Johnson"—a beautiful tribute to the worth of a fine soul.

But our Author had by this time many outside friends of another sort, and the circle was constantly widening. One of the most distinguished of these was the famous Sir Joshua Reynolds, the account of whose first meeting with Johnson is very interesting. When residing in Castle Street, Cavendish Square, our Author used frequently to visit two ladies who lived opposite to him, daughters of Admiral Cotterell. Reynolds was also in the habit of visiting them: and there, on one occasion, the two men met. In the course of conversation the ladies happened to express their regret for the death of a friend to whom they had owed great obligations; Reynolds observed, "You have, however, the comfort of being relieved from a burden of gratitude." The ladies, of course, gave utterance to a little feminine disgust at this harsh statement, which struck them as very selfish; but Johnson at once undertook Sir Joshua's defence, taken captive, on the instant, by this proof of mind on the part of the speaker. That happy deliverance was the commencement of a long and strong friendship between the two visitors, which began in real earnest that very evening-Johnson having gone home with Reynolds to sup with him. As soon as a man proved that there was something in him --that he could think for himself—-Johnson struck hands with him instantly, recognising, as by a kind of intellectual free-masonry, a true brother.

Reynolds used to tell a capital and thoroughly characteristic anecdote of his new friend shortly after the above meeting. One evening, when again visiting at the Cotterells', the Duchess of Argyle and another lady of high rank came in. This gorgeous arrival would seem to have somewhat dazzled the eyes of their entertainers; for Johnson fancied himself and his friend thrown quite into the shade in the presence of these two great lights. But he took his revenge, and a very novel one too. The ladies' pride was to blame, and their pride should be brought low. Johnson resolved to disgrace them in the eyes of the grandees by making it be supposed that he and his friend were low people, who should not, of course, have been on visiting terms at such a house.

He

therefore shouted aloud to Reynolds, "How much do you think you and I could get in a week, if we were to work as hard as we could?" Who but Johnson could ever have dreamt of such a masterly revenge?

Soon after the decease of "The Rambler" our Author's acquaintance with Mr. Bennet Langton, of Langton, in Lincolnshire, began an acquaintance which speedily ripened into a valuable friendship. His introduction to the sage is as rich in its way as that of Sir Joshua Reynolds. It was at Johnson's own house, and in the morning, or rather at noon-for our friend seldom issued from his bed-chamber before mid-day. Mr. Langton had known the great man hitherto only by his writings; and the notions he had formed of the personal appearance of the author of "The Rambler" were more accordant with the ideal fitness of things than with stern matter of fact. Down from his bedroom, and almost straight out of bed, came a huge uncouth figure, with a little dark wig set upon his head rather than covering it, and his clothes hanging all loose about him. But, as usual, when the stranger had recovered from his surprise, and had got his first look through the clothes and all the oddities into the real man, he was charmed to the spot; and one of the tenderest friendships of Johnson's life was consummated that day. This connection was none the less pleasing to one of the parties because the other happened to have "good blood" in his veins: Johnson was afterwards heard to say, "Langton, Sir, has a grant of free warren from Henry the Second, and Cardinal Stephen Langton, in King John's reign, was of his family."

The commencement of another friendship is interesting and curious, and, although it took place about two years later, had better be given here. Mr. Murphy, conductor of a periodical called "The Gray's Inn Journal," when in the country, on one occasion, with Foote the actor, happened to remark that he must be off to London in order to get ready for the press one of the numbers of his paper. "You need not go on that account," said Foote; "here is a French magazine, in which you will find a very pretty oriental tale: translate that, and send it to your printer." Murphy agreed, but, on his return to town, he learned

that the tale was itself a translation from one of Johnson's Ramblers. Mr. Murphy, some time after, waited upon Johnson to explain the curious incident; and a friendship, never broken, was there and then formed.

Through Bennet Langton our Author was afterwards introduced to a fellow-student and boon companion of his, named Topham Beauclerk-a gay and clever but rather "fast" young man of the period. Partly by sheer force of moral contrast, partly by reason of Beauclerk's "good blood" (he being of the St. Alban's family, and descent never seeming contemptible in Johnson's eyes), partly through a fancied resemblance, on the young fellow's side, to Charles the Second, and partly by subtle influences less easily defined, Beauclerk fairly got round the good man's heart, and could by-and-by use more liberties with him than any other of his acquaintance. "What a coalition!" said Garrick, when informed of this new alliance; "I shall have my old friend to bail out of the Round House." But the queer-looking union never quite led to that, although it did give rise to some strange escapades on the grave moralist's part, to which, in after life, he must often have looked back with some wonder, though, we trust, with a conscience not ill at ease.

As in the case of Savage, so here; the young man's gaiety, good-humour, wit, and passionate fulness of life, were a fine set-off against Johnson's constitutional gravity and sober-mindedness; while his friend's shortcomings were either sharply rebuked, or laughingly reproved, or tenderly overlooked-according to their kind and degree. Here is one of the sharp rebukes :-Beauclerk indulged freely in satire, and was thus reproved: "You never open your mouth but with intention to give pain; and you have often given me pain, not from the power of what you have said, but from seeing your intention." Here are two of the laughing reprovals:-Johnson once said to him, slightly altering a line of

Pope's,

66

Thy love of folly, and thy scorn of fools! Everything thou dost shows the one, and everything thou say'st, the other." And again, on another occasion: "Thy body is all vice, and thy mind all virtue." Beauclerk not seeming to take this