ily of that name, who had been quartered | already in English, it must be remembered, at Litchfield as an officer of the army, and had at this time a house in London, where Johnson was frequently entertained, and had an opportunity of meeting genteel company. Not very long before his death, he mentioned this, among other particulars of his life, which he was kindly communicating to me; and he described this early friend, “ Harry Hervey," thus: "He was a very vicious 1 man, but very kind to me. If you call a dog HERVEY, I shall love him." He told me he had now written only three acts of his IRENE, and that he retired for some time to lodgings at Greenwich, where he proceeded in it somewhat further, and used to compose, walking in the Park; but did not stay long enough at that place to finish it. At this period we find the following letter from him to Mr. Edward Cave, which, as a link in the chain of his literary history, it is proper to insert: "Greenwich, next door to the Golden Heart, Church-street, July 12, 1737. "SIR,-Having observed in your papers very uncommon offers of encouragement to men of letters, I have chosen, being a stranger in London, to communicate to you the following design, which, I hope, if you join in it, will be of advantage to both of us. "The History of the Council of Trent having been lately translated into French, and published with large notes by Dr. Le Courayer, the reputation of that book is so much revived in England, that, it is presumed, a new translation of it from the Italian2, together with Le Courayer's notes from the French, could not fail of a favourable reception. "If it be answered, that the History is The Honourable Henry Hervey was nearly of the same age with Johnson, having been born about nine months before him, in the year 1709. He married Catherine, the sister of Sir Thomas Aston, in 1739; and as that lady had seven sisters, she probably succeeded to the Aston estate on the death of her brother under his will. Mr. Hervey took the degree of master of arts at Cambridge, at the late age of thirty-five, in 1744; about which time, it is believed, he entered into holy orders. MALONE. [Mr. Hervey's acquaintance and kindness Johnson probably owed to his friend Mr. Walmesley.-Walmesley and Hervey, it will be recollected, married sisters.-ED.] 1 [For the excesses which Dr. Johnson characterises as vicious, Mr Hervey was, probably, as much to be pitied as blamed. He was very eccentric.-ED.] that there was the same objection against Le Courayer's undertaking, with this disadvantage, that the French had a version by one of their best translators, whereas you cannot read three pages of the English history without discovering that the style is capable of great improvements; but whether those improvements are to be expected from this attempt, you must judge from the specimen, which, if you approve the proposal, I shall submit to your examination. Suppose the merit of the versions equal, we may hope that the addition of the notes will turn the balance in our favour, considering the reputation of the annotator. "Be pleased to favour me with a speedy answer, if you are not willing to engage in this scheme; and appoint me a day to wait upon you, if you are.-I am, sir, your humble servant. SAM. JOHNSON." It should seem from this letter, though subscribed with his own name, that he had not yet been introduced to Mr. Cave. We shall presently see what was done in consequence of the proposal which it contains. In the course of the summer he returned to Lichfield, where he had left Mrs. Johnson, and there he at last finished his tragedy, which was not executed with his rapidity of composition upon other occasions, but was slowly and painfully elaborated. A few days before his death, while burning a great mass of papers, he picked out from among them the original unformed sketch of this tragedy, in his own hand-writing, and gave it to Mr. Langton, by whose favour a copy of it is now in my possession. It contains fragments of the intended plot and speeches for the different persons of the drama, partly in the raw materials of prose, partly worked up into verse; as also a variety of hints for illustration, borrowed from the Greek, Roman, and modern writers. The hand-writing is very difficult to be read, even by those who were best acquainted with Johnson's mode of penmanship, which at all times was very particular. The king having graciously accepted of this manuscript as a literary curiosity, Mr. Langton made a fair and distinct copy of it, which he ordered to be bound up with the original and the printed tragedy; and the volume is deposited in the king's library. His majesty was pleased to permit Mr. Langton to take a copy of it for himself. The whole of it is rich in thought and imagery, and happy expressions; and of the disjecta membra scattered throughout, and as yet unarranged, a good dramatick poet might avail himself with considerable advantage. I I shall give my readers some specimens of different kinds, distinguishing | and art immortal; for sentiments like thine them by the Italic character. "Sure this is love, which heretofore I conceived the dream of idle maids, and wanton poets." "Though no comets or prodigies foretold the ruin of Greece, signs which heaven must by another miracle enable us to understand, yet might it be foreshown, by tokens no less certain, by the vices which always bring it on.” were never to sink into nothing. Ithought all the thoughts of the fair had been to select the graces of the day, dispose the colours of the flaunting (flowing) robe, tune the voice and roll the eye, place the gem, choose the dress, and add new roses to the fading cheek, but-sparkling." Thus in the tragedy: "Illustrious maid, new wonders fix me thine; I shall select one other passage, on account of the doctrine which it illustrates. IRENE observes, "that the Supreme Being will accept of virtue, whatever outward circumstances it may be accompanied with, and may be delighted with varieties of worship: but is answered, That variety cannot affect that Being, who, infinitely happy in his own perfections, wants no external gratifications; nor can infinite truth be delighted with falsehood; that though he may guide or pity those he leaves in darkness, he abandons those who shut their eyes against the beams of day.” Johnson's residence at Lichfield, on his return to it at this time, was only for three months; and as he had as yet seen but a small part of the wonders of the metropolis, he had little to tell his townsmen'. He This last passage is worked up in the related to me the following minute tragedy itself, as follows: LEONTIUS. -That power that kindly spreads The clouds, a signal of impending showers, To warn the wand'ring linnet to the shade, Beheld, without concern, expiring Greece, And not one prodigy foretold our fate. DEMETRIUS. A thousand horrid prodigies foretold it; MAHOMET (to IRENE). "I have tried thee, and joy to find that thou deservest to be loved by Mahomet,—with a mind great as his own. Sure, thou art an errour of nature, and an exception to the rest of thy sex, 20 Sept. 1773. anecdote of this period: "In the last age, when my mother lived in London, there were two sets of people, those who gave the wall, and those who took it: the peaceable and the quarelsome. When I returned to Lichfield, after having been in London, my mother asked me whether I was one of those who gave the wall, or those who took it. Now it is fixed that every man keeps to the right; or, if one is taking the wall, another yields it; and it is never a dispute." He now removed to London with Mrs. Johnson; but her daughter, who had lived with them at Edial, was left with her relations in the country. His lodgings were for some time in Woodstock-street, near Hanover-square, and afterwards in Castle 1 [On the contrary, if he lived after the manner of his Ofellus, he probably saw more of common life than when he was, in his subsequent residence, constrained by the presence of Mrs. Johnson to more domestic and regular habits.— ED.] 1 [She very soon, it appears, resided with old Mrs. Johnson. See, ante p. 32. ED.] street, near Cavendish-square. As there is something pleasingly interesting, to many, in tracing so great a man through all his different habitations, I shall present my readers with an exact list of his lodgings and houses, in order of time, which, in placid condescension to my respectful curiosity, he one evening dictated to me, but without specifying how long he lived at each 1. 10 Oct 1779. 1. Exeter-street, off Catherine-street, Strand [1737]. 2. Greenwich [1737]. 3. Woodstock-street, near Hanoversquare [1737]. 4. Castle-street, Cavendish-square, No. 6 [1738]. 5. Boswell-court. 6. Strand. 7. Strand again. 8. Bow-street. 9. Holborn. 10. Fetter-lane. The Gentleman's Magazine, begun and carried on by Mr. Edward Cave, under the name of Sylvanus Urban, had attracted the notice and esteem of Johnson, in an eminent degree, before he came to London as an adventurer in literature. He told me, that when he first saw St. John's Gate the place where that deservedly popular miscellany was originally printed, he "beheld it with 2 reverence." I suppose, indeed, that every young authour has had the same kind of feeling for the magazine or periodical publication which has first entertained him, and in which he has first had an opportunity to see himself in print, without the risk of exposing his name. I myself recollect such impressions from "The Scots Magazine," which was begun at Edinburgh in the year 1739, and has been ever conducted with judgment, accuracy, and propriety. I yet cannot help thinking of it with an affectionate regard. Johnson has dignified the Gentleman's Magazine by 11. Holborn again [at the Golden An- the importance with which he invests the chor, Holborn-bars, 1748]. 12. Gough-square [1748]. 15. Inner Temple-lane, No. 1 [1760]. 17. Bolt-court, Fleet-street, No. 8 [1777]. In the progress of his life I shall have occasion to mention some of them as connected with particular incidents, or with the writing of particular parts of his works. To some, this minute attention may appear trifling; but when we consider the punctilious exactness with which the different houses in which Milton resided have been traced by the writers of his life, a similar enthusiasm may be pardoned in the biographer of Johnson. life of Cave; but he has given it still greater lustre by the various admirable Essays which he wrote for it. Though Johnson was often solicited by his friends to make a complete list of his writings, and talked of doing it, I believe with a serious intention that they should all be collected on his own account, he put it off from year to year, and at last died without having done it perfectly. I have one in his own hand-writing, which contains a certain number; I indeed doubt if he could have remembered every one of them, as they were so numerous, so various, and scattered in such a multiplicity of unconnected publications; nay, several of them published under the names of other persons, to whom he liberally contributed from the abundance of his mind. We must, therefore, be content to discover them, partly from occasional information given by him His tragedy being by this time, as he thought, completely finished and fit for the stage, he was very desirous that it should be brought forward. Mr. Peter Garrick 2 [If, as Mr. Boswell supposes, Johnson looktold me, that Johnson and he went togeth-ed at St. John's Gate as the printing office of er to the Fountain tavern, and read it over, Cave, surely a less emphatical term than reverand that he afterwards solicited Mr. Fleet-man's Magazine had been at this time but six ence would have been more just. The Gentlewood, the patentee of Drury-lane theatre, years before the publick, and its contents were, to have it acted at his house; but Mr. Fleet- until Johnson himself contributed to improve it, wood would not accept it, probably because entitled to any thing rather than reverence; but it was not patronized by some man of high it is much more probable that Johnson's reverrank; and it was not acted till 1749, when ence was excited by the recollections connected his friend David Garrick was manager of with the ancient gate itself, the last relique of the that theatre. once extensive and magnificent priory of the heroic knights of the order of St. John of Jerusalem, suppressed at the dissolution, and destroyed by successive dilapidations. Its last prior, Sir William Weston, though compensated with the annual pension (enormous in those days) of 1000. died of a broken heart, on Ascension-day, 1540, the very day the house was suppressed.-ED.] [This list Mr. Boswell placed under the date at which it was dictated to him. It seems more conveniently introduced here, and the editor has added, as far as he has discovered, the year in which Johnson first appears in any of these residences.-ED.] to his friends, and partly from internal evidence 1. His first performance in the Gentleman's Magazine, which for many years was his principal resource for employment and support, was a copy of Latin verses, in March, 1738, addressed to the editor in so happy a style of compliment, that Cave must have been destitute both of taste and sensibility 2, had he not felt himself highly gratified. "Ad URBANUM*. URBANE, nullis fesse laboribus, Quid moliatur gens imitantium, Quid et minetur, solicitus parùm, Vacare solis perge Musis, Juxta animo studiisque felix. Linguæ procacis plumbea spicula, Victrix per obstantes catervas Intende nervos, fortis, inanibus Intende jam nervos, habebis Non ulla Musis pagina gratior, Utilibus recreare mentem. 1 While in the course of my narrative I enumerate his writings, I shall take care that my readers shall not be left to waver in doubt, between certainty and conjecture, with regard to their authenticity, and, for that purpose, shall mark with an asterisk (*) those which he acknowledged to his friends, and with a dagger (†) those which are ascertained to be his by internal evidence. When any other pieces are ascribed to him, I shall give my reasons.-Boswell. 2 [Taste and sensibility were very certainly not the distinguishing qualities of Cave; but was this ode, indeed, "a happy style of compliment?" Are "fronte sertum in erudita"-" Lingue plumbea, spicula"-"Victrix per obstantes catervas"-Lycoris and Iris-the rose-the violet-and the rainbow-in any way appropriate to the printer of St. John's Gate, his magazine, or his antagonists? How Johnson would in later life have derided, in another, such misapplied pedantry! Mr. Murphy surmises that "this ode may have been suggested to the mind of Johnson, who had meditated a history of the modern Latin poets (see ante, p. 58), by Casimir's ode to Pope Urban, 'Urbane regum maxime, maxime A translation of this Ode, by an unknown correspondent, appeared in the Magazine for the month of May following -BoswELL. [As did, in 1784, another, attributed by Mr. Nichols to Mr. Jackson, of Canterbury.-ED.] It appears that he was now enlisted by Mr. Cave as a regular coadjutor in his magazine, by which he probably obtained a tolerable livelihood. Hawk. p. 50. [This drew Johnson into a close intimacy with Cave: he was much at St. John's Gate, and taught Garrick the way thither. Cave had no great relish for mirth, but he could bear it; and having been told by Johnson, that his friend had talents for the theatre, and was come to London with a view to the profession of an actor, expressed a wish to see him in some comic character: Garrick readily complied; and, as Cave himself told me, with a little preparation of the room over the great arch of St. John's Gate, and with the assistance of a few journeymen printers, who were called together for the purpose of read ing the other parts, represented, with all the graces of comic humour, the principal character in Fielding's farce of the MockDoctor. Cave's temper was phlegmatic: and though he assumed, as the publisher of the Magazine, the name of Sylvanus Urban, he had few of those qualities that constitute the character of urbanity. Judge of his want of them by this question, which he once put to an authour: "Mr.- —3, I hear you have just published a pamphlet, and am told there is a very good paragraph in it, upon the subject of musick: did you write that yourself?" His discernment was also slow; and as he had already at his command some writers of prose and verse, who, in the language of booksellers, are called good hands, he was the backwarder in making advances, or courting an intimaCy with Johnson. Upon the first approach of a stranger, his practice was to continue sitting, a posture in which he was ever to be found, and, for a few minutes, to continue silent: if at any time he was inclined to begin the discourse, it was generally by putting a leaf of the Magazine, then in the press, into the hand of his visitor, and asking his opinion of it. Sir John Hawkins remembered that, calling in on him once, he gave him to read the beautiful poem of Collins, written for Shakspeare's Cymbe line, "To fair Fidele's grassy tomb," which, though adapted to a particular circumstance in the play, Cave was for inserting in his Magazine, without any reference to the its beauty if it were so published: this he subject: Hawkins told him it would lose of could not see; nor could he be convinced of 3 [Perhaps Hawkins himself.-ED.] the propriety of the name Fidele: he thought | Senate of Lilliput," sometimes with feigned Pastorn a better, and so printed it. He was so incompetent a judge of Johnson's abilities, that, meaning at one time to dazzle him with the splendour of some of those luminaries in literature who favoured him with their correspondence, he told him that, if he would, in the evening, be at a certain ale-house in the neighbourhood of Clerkenwell, he might have a chance of seeing Mr. Browne, and one or two other of the persons employed in the Magazine. Johnson accepted the invitation; and was introduced by Cave, dressed in a loose horseman's coat2, and such a great bushy uncombed wig as he constantly wore, to the sight of Mr. Browne, whom he found sitting at the upper end of a long table, in a cloud of tobacco-smoke, and had his curiosity gratified. Johnson saw very clearly those offensive particulars that made a part of Cave's character; but, as he was one of the most quicksighted men in discovering the good and amiable qualities of others, a faculty which he has displayed, as well in the life of Cave, as in that of Savage, printed among his works, so was he ever inclined to palliate their defects; and though he was above courting the patronage of a man, whom, for many reasons, he could not but hold cheap, he disdained not to accept it, when tendered with any degree of complacency.] At what time, or by what means, he had acquired a competent knowledge both of 3 French and Italian, I do not know; but he was so well skilled in them, as to be sufficiently qualified for a translator. That part of his labour which consisted in emendation and improvement of the productions of other contributors, like that employed in levelling ground, can be perceived only by those who had an opportunity of comparing the original with the altered copy. What we certainly know to have been done by him in this way was the Debates in both houses of Parliament, under the name of "The denominations of the several speakers, sometimes with denominations formed of the letters of their real names, in the manner of what is called anagram, so that they might easily be deciphered. Parliament then kept the press in a kind of mysterious awe, which made it necessary to have recourse to such devices. In our time it has acquired an unrestrained freedom, so that the people in all parts of the kingdom have a fair, open, and exact report of the actual proceedings of their representatives and legislators, which in our constitution is highly to be valued; though, unquestionably, there has of late been too much reason to complain of the petulance with which obscure scribblers have presumed to treat men of the most respectable character and situation. This important article of the Gentleman's Magazine was, for several years, executed by Mr. William Guthrie, a man who deserves to be respectably recorded in the literary annals of this country. He was descended of an ancient family in Scotland; but having a small patrimony, and being an adherent of the unfortunate house of Stuart, he could not accept of any office in the state; he therefore came to London, and employed his talents and learning as an "authour by profession." His writings in history, criticism, and politics, had considerable merit 4. He was the first English historian who had recourse to that authentick source of information, the Parliamentary Journals; and such was the power of his political pen, that, at an early period, government thought it worth their while to keep it quiet by a pension, which he enjoyed till his death 5. Johnson esteemed him enough to wish that his life should be written. The debates in Parliament, which were brought home and digested by Guthrie, whose memory, though surpassed by others who have since followed him in the same department, was yet very quick and tenacious, were sent by Cave to Johnson for his revision; and, after some time, when Guth[About this period we find Mr. M. Browne a rie had attained to greater variety of emconstant but feeble contributor to the Magazine.ployment, and the speeches were more and ED.] 2 [This is a good description of the figure Johnson makes in the earliest portrait of him (if it can be so called) which we have, in the drawing by Loggan, in 1748. See ante, p. 36.-ED.] 3 [French evidently early, as he translated Lobo in 1733, and, though he appears never to have attained ease and fluency in speaking that language, we see by his communication with General Paoli (10th Oct. 1769), and by a letter to a French lady (probably Madame de Boufflers), preserved by Mrs. Piozzi, that he could write it with idiomatic ease. We find that he proposed to translate Father Paul from the Italian, and in his letter to Cave, undated but prior to 1744, he gave an opinion on some Italian production.-ED.] more enriched by the accession of Johnson's genius, it was resolved that he should do the whole himself, from the scanty notes furnished by persons employed to attend in 4 How much poetry he wrote, I know not; but he informed me that he was the authour of the beautiful little piece, "The Eagle and Robin Redbreast," in the collection of poems entitled "The Union," though it is there said to be written by Archibald Scott, before the year 1600.-BosWELL. 5 [See a letter, from Guthrie to the minister, offering his services, and fixing on "the quarterly payments," in Mr. D'Israeli's interesting work, The Calamities of Authors," p. 5.-ED] |