teresting one; the materials on which to found a judgment are few and open to all, and a final decision seems possible. Macaulay says: "While leading this vagrant and miserable life, Johnson fell in love. The object of his passion was Mrs. Elizabeth Porter, a widow who had children as old as himself. To ordinary spectators the lady appeared to be a short, fat, coarse woman, painted half an inch thick, dressed in gaudy colors, and fond of exhibiting provincial airs and graces, which were not exactly those of the Queensberrys and Lepels. To Johnson, however, whose passions were strong, whose eyesight was too weak to distinguish ceruse from natural bloom, and who had seldom or never been in the same room with a woman of real fashion, his Titty, as he called her, was the most beautiful, graceful, and accomplished of her sex. That his admiration was unfeigned cannot be doubted, for she was as poor as himself. She accepted, with a readiness which did her little honor, the addresses of a suitor who might have been her son." Macaulay goes on to tell how Johnson set up a school. After asserting that Johnson bimself was unfit for the life of a schoolmaster, he adds: Nor was the tawdry, painted grandmother whom he called his Titty well qualified to make provision for the comfort of young gentlemen. David Garrick, who was one of the pupils, used, many years later, to throw the best company of London into convulsions of laughter by mimicking the endearments of this extraordinary pair." Some pages further on, in describing Mrs. Johnson's death, he says: "Many people had been surprised to see a man of his genius and learning stooping to every drudgery, and denying himself almost every comfort, for the purpose of supplying a silly, affected old woman with superfluities, which she accepted with but little gratitude." Assuming for the moment that Mrs. Porter was such as Macaulay describes her, assuming, also, that Johnson in his wooing and the seventeen years of his married life never discovered that her charms, such as they were, were due to art, it most certainly was not his eyesight that was at fault. It is strange how any one so well read in his Boswell as Macaulay most certainly was, could have maintained that Johnson's eyesight was too weak to distinguish ceruse from natural bloom. There was, no doubt, some great defect in Johnson's sight. Our belief is that he could not see things at a glance, but that if time were given him he could distinguish clearly enough. At all events, when he was a young man, and in good health, he could tell the hour by the town clock of Lichfield. Boswell records it was wonderful how accurate his observation of visual objects was, notwithstanding his imperfect eyesight, owing to a habit of attention. Moreover, it was noticed that so far from being indifferent to the appearance and the dress of ladies, he was, on the contrary, most observant. "The ladies with whom he was acquainted agree that no man was more nicely and minutely critical in the elegance of female dress." Miss Burney says just the same. "It seems," she writes," he always speaks his mind concerning the dress of ladies; and all ladies who are here (i.e. at Streatham) obey his injunctions implicitly, and alter whatever he disapproves. Notwithstanding he is sometimes so absent, and always so near-sighted, he scrutinizes into every part of almost everybody's appearance." In another part of her diary she writes: "I believe his blindness is as much the effect of absence as of infirmity, for he sees wonderfully at times." Madame Piozzi's testimony more than bears this out. "No accidental position of a riband," she says, "escaped him, so nice was his observation, and so rigorous his demands of propriety." tells how "a lady whose accomplishments he never denied (Mrs. Montagu, we believe), came to our house one day covered with diamonds, feathers, etc., and he did not seem inclined to chat with her as usual. I asked him why, when the company was gone. Why, her head looked so like that of a woman who shows puppets,' said he, 'and her voice so confirmed the fancy, that I could not bear her to-day; when she wears a large cap I can talk to her."" In fact there is good evidence that he had in his early days in. terfered with his wife as much as at Streatham he interfered with Mrs. Thrale and her guests. He once told Mrs. Thrale "that Mrs. Johnson's hair was eminently beautiful quite blonde, like that of a baby; but that she fretted about the color, and was always desirous to dye it black, which be very judiciously hindered her from doing." It is abundantly clear then that, if Mrs. Johnson was the tawdry, painted grandmother that Macaulay describes, Johnson, so far as his eyesight went, would not long have been deceived by her ceruse. If he was blind, it was the blindness of a lover. She But is the picture that Macaulay draws with the Queensberrys and Lepels. It mattered little to him, therefore, what might be their airs and graces. But provincial airs and graces - the airs and graces, that is to say, which as much became ladies who spent their whole life in the country, as courtly airs and graces became the ladies of St. James's - were surely not unknown to him. correct? Has he not himself laid on the voluptuous loveliness which twenty years Doubtless long before Mrs. Johnson's death the difference of years between her and her husband had become far more strongly marked. As she had fallen away in looks, so had he improved. Miss Porter told Boswell that "when Johnson was first introduced to her mother his appearance was very forbidding; he was then lean and lank, so that his immense structure of bones was hideously striking to the eye, and the scars of the scrofula were deeply visible." There may be some exaggeration in this description; but, on the other hand, is there not every reason to believe that the portrait that Garrick has drawn of the wife is equally overcharged? For "the ordinary spectators," of whom Macaulay writes with such confidence, are found, so far, at least, as our discovery has extended, to be Garrick, and no one but Garrick. He alone, with the exception of Miss Porter, of those who knew Mrs. Johnson at the time of her marriage, has left any account of her personal appearance. The picture that he draws is certainly repulsive enough. "Mr. Garrick described her to me," writes Boswell, "as very fat, with a bosom of more than ordinary protuberance, with swelled cheeks, of a florid red produced by thick painting, and increased by the liberal use of cordials; flaring and fantastic in her dress, and affected both in her speech and her general behavior. I have seen Garrick exhibit her, by his exquisite talent of mimicry, so as to excite the heartiest bursts of laughter; but he probably, as is the case in all such representations, considerably aggravated the picture." Madame Piozzi says that "Garrick told Mrs. Thrale that she was a little, painted puppet, of no value at all, and quite disguised with affectation, full of odd airs of rural elegance; and he made out some comical scenes by mimicking her in a dialogue he pretended to have overheard. I do not know whether he meant such stuff to be believed or no, it was so comical." Macaulay, it may be noticed, has combined the two portraits. The fatness and coarseness he gets from Boswell, the shortness from Madame Piozzi. Yet "a little, painted puppet' and " a short, fat, coarse woman do not seem to be well applied to the same person. Be that as it may, it is worth notice that there is nothing that fixes the date of Garrick's description. Is he speaking of her as she was when Johnson wooed her, or as she was after many years of married life? The chief reproach thrown by Macaulay on Johnson was that he was so blinded as to fall in love with a short, fat, coarse woman, painted half an inch thick -a tawdry, painted grandmother. What proof have we that Mrs. Elizabeth Porter, the widow of forty-six, was such a woman? It may well be doubted whether Garrick's description, even when applied to her later years, is not a gross exaggeration. Percy, the Bishop of Dromore, has added a warning, which Macaulay should scarcely have so totally disregarded. "As Johnson," he says, "kept Garrick much in awe when present, David, when his back was turned, repaid the restraint with ridicule of him and his Dulcinea, which should be read with great abatement." Mrs. Thrale saw a picture of her at Lichfield, which was, she says, very pretty, and her daughter, Miss Lucy Porter, said it was like. Whatever may have been her appearance, "the lover," says Macaulay, "continued to be under the illusions of the wedding-day till the lady died in her sixty-fourth year. On her monument he placed an inscription extolling the charms of her person and of her manners." But may not a pretty woman, who outlives her prettiness, be fairly described on her tombstone as formosa? Would it have been wrong on their monuments to call Marlborough gallant or Swift learned, because from the eyes of one the streams of dotage flowed, and the other expired a driveller and a show? Johnson might well have discovered that his wife had lost her charms, for all that the epitaph he placed over her shows. Besides, as he himself said, "in lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath." " He was not, indeed, the man to form romantic notions, nor to find in every goose a swan. His conduct to his wife on their marriage day shows clearly enough that that "homely wisdom," for which Macaulay praised him, had by no means deserted him even in the passion of love. "She had read the old romances,' he told Boswell, "and had got into her head the fantastical notion that a woman of spirit should use her lover like a dog. So, sir, at first she told me that I rode too fast, and she could not keep up with me; and, when I rode a little slower, she passed me, and complained that I lagged behind. I was not to be made the slave of caprice; and I resolved to begin as I meant to end. I therefore pushed on briskly, till I was fairly out of her sight. The road lay between two hedges, so I was sure she could not miss it; and I contrived that she should soon come up with me. When she did, I observed her to be in tears." More than twenty years after his wife's 1 Boswell. Pray, sir, do you not suppose that there are fifty women in the world, with any one of whom a man may be as happy as with any one woman in particular? death, when, on a visit to Birmingham, he | lor would preach, we have proof of the Johnson.- Ay, sir; fifty thousand. Johnson. To be sure not, sir. I believe suit with the occasion." Macaulay says that it cannot be doubted If we should set aside the great differ- that Johnson's admiration for the widow ence in their ages, Mrs. Johnson would was unfeigned, for she was as poor as seem to have had qualities which made himself. This statement about her povher no unsuitable companion for Johnson. erty it is not easy to accept. Boswell, Boswell says: "She must have had a indeed, says that the marriage was a very superiority of understanding and talents, imprudent scheme, both on account of as she certainly inspired him with more their disparity of years and her want of than ordinary passion." She could, at all fortune. Miss Williams also states that events, understand and admire his genius. Mr. Porter had died insolvent; but Miss The first time she met him and heard him Williams did not make the acquaintance talk, she said to her daughter, "This is of the Johnsons till many years after their the most sensible man that I ever saw in marriage, and so in this point she might my life." Miss Williams, who knew her have been mistaken. Hawkins says that well, and who was herself a woman of she was left "so provided for, as made great intelligence, says that "she had a a match with her to a man in Johnson's good understanding and great sensibility, circumstances desirable. .. Her forbut was inclined to be satirical." John- tune, which is conjectured to have been son told Mrs. Thrale that "his wife read about eight hundred pounds, placed him comedy better than anybody he ever in a state of affluence to which before he heard; in tragedy she mouthed too much." had been a stranger." It is difficult to In a passage in Boswell we have proof believe that she had not some money. of her enjoyment of literature. John- Johnson records, in July 1732, that he had son," he writes, " told me, with an amiable received twenty pounds, being all that he fondness, a little pleasing circumstance had reason to hope for out of his father's relative to this work ['The Rambler']. effects previous to his mother's death. Mrs. Johnson, in whose judgment and He had since that time earned five guintaste he had great confidence, said to eas by his translation of Lobo's "Voyage him, after a few numbers had come out, to Abyssinia." He had, moreover, held 'I thought very well of you before; but at least one situation as usher in the I did not imagine you could have written grammar school of Market Bosworth, anything equal to this.' Distant praise, and at the same time had been a kind of from whatever quarter, is not so delight- domestic chaplain to the patron of the ful as that of a wife whom a man loves school. This situation he recollected all and esteems." Could Boswell, we may his life afterwards with the strongest with some reason ask, have written this aversion, and even a degree of horror. if he had known that Johnson's wife was For six months of the time he had been the "silly, affected old woman" of Ma- the guest of his old schoolfellow, Mr. caulay's imagination? In the sermon Hector. In 1735 he married, and either that Johnson wrote for her funeral, and that year or the next he hired a large which he had hoped his friend Dr. Tay- | house, and set up a school. He had but three pupils according to Boswell. Haw-| Sir John Hawkins, had made his acquaintkins gives him a few more. "His num-ance before his wife's death, but her he bers, he says, "at no time exceeded had never seen. He had been told "by eight, and of those not all were boarders." Mr. Garrick, Dr. Hawkesworth, and othAfter a year and a half he gave up school- ers that there was somewhat crazy in the keeping, and went to London. "He had behavior of them both; profound respect a little money when he came to town," on his part, and the airs of an antiquated says Boswell. As he left his wife at Lich- beauty on hers." He goes on to say: field, we may feel sure that he did not "Johnson had not then been used to the leave her without making some provision company of women, and nothing but for her. The school could scarcely have his conversation rendered him tolerable paid its expenses. Certainly it could not among them; it was, therefore, necessary have returned him the outlay on the fur- that he should practise his best manners niture, much less have provided him with to one, whom, as she was descended from any surplus. It is difficult to see how the an ancient family, and had brought him a newly married couple lived for almost the fortune, he thought his superior.' Out first three years of their married life, un- of Hawkins's simple statement that Johnless Mrs. Johnson had some money of son had not been used to the company of her own. women, have, perhaps, grown "the woman of real fashion" of Macaulay, "the Queensberrys and Lepels." Hawkins's explanation of any part of Johnson's conduct is worth nothing. That "most unclubable man who, as Johnson himself said, was penurious and mean, and had a degree of brutality and a tendency to savageness that could not easily be defended, was utterly unfit to understand the character of a great man. His statements of facts, however, may perhaps be generally accepted, if they are not improbable in themselves, and if there is no evidence to the contrary. In the present case we see no reason to doubt that he has correctly reported what Garrick and Hawkesworth had told him. Whether Mrs. Johnson had money or not, we know not what justification Macaulay has for asserting: "Nor was the tawdry, painted grandmother, whom he called his Titty, well qualified to make provision for the comfort of young_gentlemen." It was not, by the way, Titty, but Tetty, that Johnson called his wife. Tetty, as Boswell says, like Betty, is provincially used as a contraction for Elizabeth, her Christian name. Macaulay, apparently in confirmation of his assertion, then tells how "Garrick used to throw the best company of London into convulsions of laughter by mimicking the endearments of this extraordinary pair." Garrick's mimicry no more proved that the wife was not well qualified to make provision for the comfort of young gentlemen than that the husband was not well qualified to write his dictionary. She had certainly one of the qualities which are commonly thought to be the marks of a good housewife. My wife," said Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, "had a particular reverence for cleanliness, and desired the praise of neatness in her dress and furniture, as many ladies do, till they become troublesome to their best friends, slaves to their own besoms, and only sigh for the hour of sweeping their husbands out of the house as dirt and useless lumber. A clean floor is so comfortable, she would say sometimes by way of twitting; till at last I told her that I thought we had had talk enough about the floor; we would now have a touch at the ceiling." 66 It is certainly surprising, seeing that Mrs. Johnson lived in London fourteen or fifteen years, that what is known of her is really so little. Not much, how ever, is known of Johnson during this same period. One of his biographers, Of the closing years of Mrs. Johnson's life we know next to nothing. "The last Rambler,'" says Macaulay, "was written in a sad and gloomy hour. Mrs. Johnson had been given over by the physicians. Three days later she died. She left her husband almost broken-hearted." And then Macaulay adds, in a passage that we have already quoted: "Many people had been surprised to see a man of his genius and learning stooping to every drudgery, and denying himself almost every comfort, for the purpose of supplying a silly, affected old woman with superfluities, which she accepted with but little gratitude." Who are the many people of whom Macaulay speaks we are not able to say. We know but one authority for the statement. "I have been told by Mrs. Desmoulins," writes Boswell, "who, before her marriage, lived for some time with Mrs. Johnson at Hampstead, that she indulged herself in country air and nice living at an unsuitable expense, while her husband was drudging in the smoke of London." This may be the case, but the |