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mace of the Antiquarian Society will be given to Judge Barrington.' (He was 'second Justice of Chester.')

For Dr. Brocklesby see ante, iv. 203, 266, 390, 461.

Of Mr. John Nichols, Murphy says that 'his attachment to Dr. Johnson was unwearied.' Life of Johnson, p. 66. He was the printer of The Lives of the Poets (ante, iv. 42, 43), and the author of Biographical and Literary Anecdotes of William Bowyer Printer, 'the last of the learned printers,' whose apprentice he had been (ante, iv. 425). Horace Walpole (Letters, viii. 259) says:—

'I scarce ever saw a book so correct as Mr. Nichols's Life of Mr. Bowyer. I wish it deserved the pains he has bestowed on it every way, and that he would not dub so many men great. I have known several of his heroes, who were very little men.'

The Life of Bowyer being recast and enlarged was republished under the title of Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century. From 1778 till his death in 1826 the Gentleman's Magazine was in great measure in his hands. Southey, writing in 1804, says:—

I have begun to take in here at Keswick the Gentleman's Magazine, alias the Oldwomania, to enlighten a Portuguese student among the mountains; it does amuse me by its exquisite inanity, and the glorious and intense stupidity of its correspondents; it is, in truth, a disgrace to the age and the country.' Southey's Life and Correspondence, ii. 281.

Mr. William Cooke, 'commonly called Conversation Cooke,' wrote Lives of Macklin and Foote. Forster's Essays, ii. 312, and Gent. Mag. 1824, P. 374. Mr. Richard Paul Joddrel, or Jodrell, was the author of The Persian Heroine, a Tragedy, which, in Baker's Biog. Dram. i. 400, is wrongly assigned to Sir R. P. Jodrell, M.D. Nichols's Lit. Anec. ix. 2.

For Mr. Paradise see ante, iv. 420, note 1.

Dr. Horsley was the controversialist, later on Bishop of St. David's and next of Rochester. Gibbon makes splendid mention of him (Misc. Works, i. 232) when he tells how 'Dr. Priestley's Socinian shield has repeatedly been pierced by the mighty spear of Horsley.' Windham, however, in his Diary in one place (p. 125) speaks of him as having his thoughts intent wholly on prospects of Church preferment;' and in another place (p. 275) says that 'he often lays down with great confidence what turns out afterwards to be wrong.' In the House of Lords he once said that 'he did not

know

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know what the mass of the people in any country had to do with the laws but to obey them.' Parl. Hist. xxxii. 258. Thurlow rewarded him for his Letters to Priestley by a stall at Gloucester, "saying that "those who supported the Church should be supported by it." Campbell's Chancellors, ed. 1846, v. 635.

For Mr. Windham, see ante, iv. 231.

Hawkins (Life of Johnson, p. 567) thus writes of the formation of the club ::-

'I was not made privy to this his intention, but all circumstances considered, it was no matter of surprise to me when I heard that the great Dr. Johnson had, in the month of December 1783, formed a sixpenny club at an ale-house in Essex-street, and that though some of the persons thereof were persons of note, strangers, under restrictions, for three pence each night might three nights in a week hear him talk and partake of his conversation.'

Miss Hawkins (Memoirs, i. 103) says:

Boswell was well justified in his resentment of my father's designation of this club as a sixpenny club, meeting at an ale-house. . : Honestly speaking, I dare say my father did not like being passed over.'

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Sir Joshua Reynolds, writing of the club, says :

Any company was better than none; by which Johnson connected himself with many mean persons whose presence he could command. For this purpose he established a club at a little ale-house in Essexstreet, composed of a strange mixture of very learned and very ingenious odd people. Of the former were Dr. Heberden, Mr. Windham, Mr. Boswell, Mr. Steevens, Mr. Paradise. Those of the latter I do not think proper to enumerate.' Taylor's Life of Reynolds, ii. 455.

It is possible that Reynolds had never seen the Essex Head, and that the term 'little ale-house' he had borrowed from Hawkins's account. Possibly too his disgust at Barry here found vent. Murphy (Life of Johnson, p. 124) says:

'The members of the club were respectable for their rank, their talents, and their literature.'

The 'little ale-house' club saw one of its members, Alderman Clarke (ante, iv. 298), Lord Mayor within a year; another, Horsley, a Bishop within five years; and a third, Windham, Secretary at War within ten years. Nichols (Literary Anecdotes, ii. 553) gives a list of the 'constant members' at the time of Johnson's death.

APPENDIX

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Miss Burney's account of Johnson's last days is interesting, but her dates are confused more even than is common with her. I have corrected them as well as I can.

'Dec. 9. He will not, it seems, be talked to--at least very rarely. At times indeed he re-animates; but it is soon over and he says of himself:-"I am now like Macbeth-question enrages me."

'Dec. 10. At night my father brought us the most dismal tidings of dear Dr. Johnson. He had thanked and taken leave of all his physicians. Alas! I shall lose him, and he will take no leave of me. My father was deeply depressed. I hear from everyone he is now perfectly resigned to his approaching fate, and no longer in terror of death.'

'Dec. 11. My father in the morning saw this first of men. He was up and very composed. He took his hand very kindly, asked after all his family, and then in particular how Fanny did. "I hope," he said, "Fanny did not take it amiss that I did not see her. I was very bad. Tell Fanny to pray for me." After which, still grasping his hand, he made a prayer for himself, the most fervent, pious, humble, eloquent, and touching, my father says, that ever was composed. Oh! would I had heard it! He ended it with Amen! in which my father joined, and was echoed by all present; and again, when my father was leaving him, he brightened up, something of his arch look returned, and he said: "I think I shall throw the ball at Fanny yet."'

'Dec. 12. [Miss Burney called at Bolt-court.] All the rest went away but a Mrs. Davis, a good sort of woman, whom this truly charitable soul had sent for to take a dinner at his house. [See ante, iv. 276, note 2.] Mr. Langton then came. He could not look at me, and I turned away from him. Mrs. Davis asked how the Doctor was. "Going on to death very fast," was his mournful answer. "Has he taken," said she, "anything?" "Nothing at all. We carried him some bread and milk-he refused it, and said :-The less the better.'

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'Dec. 20. This day was the ever-honoured, ever-lamented Dr. Johnson committed to the earth. Oh, how sad a day to me! My father attended. I could not keep my eyes dry all day; nor can I now in the recollecting it; but let me pass over what to mourn is now so vain.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 333-339.

APPENDIX

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1

APPENDIX F.

(Notes on Boswell's note on pages 463-467.)

1 In a letter quoted in Mr. Croker's Boswell, p. 427, Dr. Johnson calls Thomas Johnson 'cousin,' and says that in the last sixteen months he had given him £40. He mentions his death in 1779. Piozzi Letters, ii. 45.

1 Hawkins (Life, p. 603) says that Elizabeth Herne was Johnson's first-cousin, and that he had constantly-how long he does not say contributed £15 towards her maintenance.

3

4

For Mauritius Lowe, see ante, iii. 368, 369, and iv. 232.

To Mr. Windham, two days earlier, he had given a copy of the New Testament, saying:-' Extremum hoc munus morientis habeto.' Windham's Diary, p. 28.

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6

For Mrs. Gardiner see ante, i. 281.

Mr. John Desmoulins was the son of Mrs. Desmoulins (ante, iii. 252, 418), and the grandson of Johnson's god-father, Dr. Swinfen (ante, i. 40, note 1). Johnson mentions him in a letter to Mrs. Thrale in 1778. 'Young Desmoulins is taken in an under-something of Drury Lane; he knows not, I believe, his own denomination.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 25.

'The reference is to The Rambler, No. 41 (not 42 as Boswell says), where Johnson mentions 'those vexations and anxieties with which all human enjoyments are polluted.'

8

Bishop Sanderson described his soul as 'infinitely polluted with sin.' Walton's Lives, ed. 1838, p. 396.

?

Hume, writing in 1742 about his Essays Moral and Politicai,

says:-

'Innys, the great bookseiler in Paul's Churchyard, wonders there is not a new edition, for that he cannot find copies for his customers.' J. H. Burton's Hume, i. 143.

10 Nichols

508

10

Appendix F.

Nichols (Lit. Anec. ii. 554) says that, on Dec. 7,

'Johnson asked him whether any of the family of Faden the printer were living. Being told that the geographer near Charing Cross was Faden's son, he said, after a short pause:—“I borrowed a guinea of his father near thirty years ago; be so good as to take this, and pay it for me."'

"Nowhere does Hawkins more shew the malignancy of his character than in his attacks on Johnson's black servant, and through him on Johnson. With the passage in which this offensive caveat is found he brings his work to a close. At the first mention of Frank (Life, p. 328) he says:

'His first master had in great humanity made him a Christian, and his last for no assignable reason, nay rather in despite of nature, and to unfit him for being useful according to his capacity, determined to make him a scholar.'

But Hawkins was a brutal fellow. See ante, i. 31, note 3, and 33, note 1.

12

Johnson had written to Taylor on Oct. 23 of this year :

Coming down from a very restless night I found your letter, which made me a little angry. You tell me that recovery is in my power. This indeed I should be glad to hear if I could once believe it. But you mean to charge me with neglecting or opposing my own health. Tell me, therefore, what I do that hurts me, and what I neglect that would help me." This letter is endorsed by Taylor: "This is the last letter. My answer, which were (sic) the words of advice he gave to Mr. Thrale the day he dyed, he resented extremely from me."' Mr. Alfred Morrison's Collection of Autographs, &c., ii. 343.

'The words of advice' which were given to Mr. Thrale the day before the fatal fit seized him, were that he should abstain from full meals. See ante, iv. 97, note 4. Johnson's resentment of Taylor's advice may account for the absence of his name in his will.

13

They were sold in 650 Lots, in a four days' sale. Besides the books there were 146 portraits, of which 61 were framed and glazed. These prints in their frames were sold in lots of 4, 8, and even 10 together, though certainly some of them—and perhaps many— were engravings from Reynolds. The Catalogue of the sale is in the Bodleian Library.

APPENDIX

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