1774.] The Quarry walk at Shrewsbury. 519 SEPTEMBER II. Sunday. We were at St. Chads, a very large and luminous Church. We were on the Castle Hill. SEPTEMBER 12. We called on Dr. Adams', and travelled towards Worcester, through Wenlock; a very mean place, though a borough. At noon, we came to Bridgenorth, and walked about the town, of which one part stands on a high rock; and part very low, by the river. There is an old tower, which, being crooked, leans so much, that it is frightful to pass by it. In the afternoon we came through Kinver, a town in Staffordshire; neat and closely built. I believe it has only one street. The road was so steep and miry, that we were forced to stop at Hartlebury, where we had a very neat inn, though it made a very poor appearance. SEPTEMBER 13. We came to Lord Sandys's, at Ombersley, where we were treated with great civility'. The house is large. The hall is a very noble room. SEPTEMBER 15. We went to Worcester, a very splendid city. The Cathedral after whom my grandfather, Thomas Wright Hill, was called, planted this walk. The tradition preserved in my family is that on his wedding-day he took six men with him and planted these trees. When blamed for keeping the wedding-dinner waiting, he answered, that if what he had been doing turned out well, it would be of far more value than a wedding-dinner. 'The Rector of St. Chad's, in Shrewsbury. He was appointed Master of Pembroke College, Oxford, in the following year. See ante, ii. 505. ''I have heard Dr. Johnson protest that he never had quite as much as he wished of wall-fruit except once in his life, and that was when we were all together at Ombersley.' Piozzi's Anec. p. 103. Mrs. Thrale wrote to him in 1778 :—' Mr. Scrase gives us fine fruit; I wished you my pear yesterday; but then what would one pear have done for you?' Piozzi Letters, ii. 36. It seems unlikely that Johnson should not at Streatham have had all the wall-fruit that he wished. is very noble, with many remarkable monuments. The library is in the Chapter House. On the table lay the Nurem berg Chronicle, I think, of the first edition. We went to the china warehouse. The Cathedral has a cloister. The long aisle is, in my opinion, neither so wide nor so high as that of Lichfield. SEPTEMBER 16. We went to Hagley, where we were disappointed of the respect and kindness that we expected'. SEPTEMBER 17. We saw the house and park, which equalled my expectation. The house is one square mass. The offices are below. The rooms of elegance on the first floor, with two stories of bedchambers, very well disposed above it. The bedchambers have low windows, which abates the dignity of the house. The park has one artificial ruin', and wants water; there is, however, one temporary cascade. From the farthest hill there is a very wide prospect. SEPTEMBER 18. I went to church. The church is, externally, very mean, 1 This visit was not to Lord Lyttelton, but to his uncle [afterwards by successive creations, Lord Westcote, and Lord Lyttelton], the father of the present Lord Lyttelton, who lived at a house called Little Hagley. DUPPA. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale in 1771 :- I would have been glad to go to Hagley in compliance with Mr. Lyttelton's kind invitation, for beside the pleasure of his conversation I should have had the opportunity of recollecting past times, and wandering per montes notos et flumina nota, of recalling the images of sixteen, and reviewing my conversations with poor Ford.' Piozzi Letters, i. 42. He had been at school at Stourbridge, close by Hagley. Ante, i. 57. See Walpole's Letters, ix. 123, for an anecdote of Lord Westcote. 'Horace Walpole, writing of Hagley in Sept. 1753 (Letters, ii. 352), says:—' There is extreme taste in the park: the seats are not the best, but there is not one absurdity. There is a ruined castle, built by Miller, that would get him his freedom even of Strawberry [Walpole's own house at Twickenham]: it has the true rust of the Barons' Wars.' and 1774.] Shenstone. 521 and is therefore diligently hidden by a plantation. There are in it several modern monuments of the Lytteltons. There dined with us, Lord Dudley, and Sir Edward Lyttelton, of Staffordshire, and his Lady. They were all persons of agreeable conversation. I found time to reflect on my birth-day, and offered a prayer, which I hope was heard. SEPTEMBER 19. We made haste away from a place, where all were offended'. In the way we visited the Leasowes'. It was rain, yet we visited all the waterfalls. There are, in one place, fourteen falls in a short line. It is the next place to Ilam Gardens3. Poor Shenstone never tasted his pension. It is not very well proved that any pension was obtained for him. I am afraid that he died of misery'. ''Mrs. Lyttelton forced me to play at whist against my liking, and her husband took away Johnson's candle that he wanted to read by at the other end of the room. Those, I trust, were the offences.' Piozzi MS. CROKER. 2 Johnson (Works, viii. 409) thus writes of Shenstone and the LeaSowes:-' -' He began to point his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his walks, and to wind his waters; which he did with such judgment and such fancy as made his little domain the envy of the great and the admiration of the skilful; a place to be visited by travellers and copied by designers. For awhile the inhabitants of Hagley affected to tell their acquaintance of the little fellow that was trying to make himself admired; but when by degrees the Leasowes forced themselves into notice, they took care to defeat the curiosity which they could not suppress by conducting their visitants perversely to inconvenient points of view, and introducing them at the wrong end of a walk to detect a deception; injuries of which Shenstone would heavily complain. Where there is emulation there will be vanity; and where there is vanity there will be folly. The pleasure of Shenstone was all in his eye: he valued what he valued merely for its looks; nothing raised his indignation more than to ask if there were any fishes in his water.' See ante, p. 393. See ante, iii. 213, and v. 489. 'He spent his estate in adorning it, and his death was probably hastened by his anxieties. He was a lamp that spent its oil in blazing. 522 Birmingham workshops. [1774. We came to Birmingham, and I sent for Wheeler, whom I found well. SEPTEMBER 20. We breakfasted with Wheeler', and visited the manufacture of Papier Maché. The paper which they use is smooth whited brown; the varnish is polished with rotten stone. Wheeler gave me a tea-board. We then went to Boulton's, who, with great civility, led us through his shops. I could not distinctly see his enginery. Twelve dozen of buttons for three shillings'. Spoons struck at once. SEPTEMBER 21. Wheeler came to us again. We came easily to Woodstock. SEPTEMBER 22. We saw Blenheim and Woodstock Park'. The Park contains two thousand five hundred acres; about four square miles. It has red deer. It is said that if he had lived a little longer he would have been assisted by a pension: such bounty could not have been ever more properly bestowed.' Johnson's Works, viii. 410. His friend, Mr. Graves, the author of The Spiritual Quixote, in a note on this passage says that, if he was sometimes distressed for money, yet he was able to leave legacies and two small annuities. 1 Mr. Duppa-without however giving his authority-says that this was Dr. Wheeler, mentioned ante, iii. 416. The Birmingham Directory for the year 1770 shews that there were two tradesmen in the town of that name, one having the same Christian name, Benjamin, as Dr. Wheeler. 2 Boswell visited these works in 1776. Ante, ii. 525. Burke in the House of Commons on Jan. 25, 1771, in a debate on Falkland's Island, said of the Spanish Declaration :-'It was made, I admit, on the true principles of trade and manufacture. It puts me in mind of a Birmingham button which has passed through an hundred hands, and after all is not worth three-halfpence a dozen.' Parl. Hist. xvi. 1345. 4 Johnson and Boswell drove through the Park in 1776. Ante, ii. 516. Mr. Bryant 1774.] The Blenheim Library. 523. Mr. Bryant' shewed me the Library with great civility. Durandi Rationale, 1459. Lascaris' Grammar of the first edition, well printed, but much less than later editions'. The first Batrachomyomachia". The Duke sent Mr. Thrale partridges and fruit. 16 'My friend the late Lord Grosvenor had a house at Salt Hill, where I usually spent a part of the summer, and thus became acquainted with that great and good man, Jacob Bryant. Here the conversation turned one morning on a Greek criticism by Dr. Johnson in some volume lying on the table, which I ventured (for I was then young) to deem incorrect, and pointed it out to him. I could not help thinking that he was somewhat of my opinion, but he was cautious and reserved. But, sir," said I, willing to overcome his scruples, " Dr. Johnson himself admitted that he was not a good Greek scholar." "Sir," he replied, with a serious and impressive air, “it is not easy for us to say what such a man as Johnson would call a good Greek scholar." I hope that I profited by that lesson-certainly I never forgot it. Gifford's Works of Ford, vol. i. p. lxii. Croker's Boswell, p. 794. So notorious is Mr. Bryant's great fondness for studying and proving the truths of the creation according to Moses, that he told me himself, and with much quaint humour, a pleasantry of one of his friends in giving a character of him :-" Bryant," said he, " is a very good scholar, and knows all things whatever up to Noah, but not a single thing in the world beyond the Deluge." Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, iii. 229. 'This is a work written by William Durand, Bishop of Mende, and printed on vellum, in folio, by Fust and Schoeffer, in Mentz, 1459. It is the third book that is known to be printed with a date. DUPPA. It is perhaps the first book with a date printed in movable metal type. Brunet, ed. 1861, ii. 904. See ante, ii. 455. 3 Dr. Johnson, in another column of his Diary, has put down, in a note, 'First printed book in Greek, Lascaris's Grammar, 4to, Mediolani, 1476.' The imprint of this book is, Mediolani Impressum per Magistrum Dionysium Paravisinum. M.CCCC.LXXVI. Die xxx Januarii. The first book printed in the English language was the Historyes of Troye, printed in 1471. DUPPA. A copy of the Historyes of Troye is exhibited in the Bodleian Library with the following superscription:-'Lefevre's Recuyell of the historyes of Troye. The first book printed in the English language. Issued by Caxton at Bruges about 1474.' * The Battle of the Frogs and Mice. The first edition was printed by Laonicus Cretensis, 1486. DUPPA. SEPTEMBER 23. |