1759. I would counsel you to omit no decent nor manly degree of importunity. Your debts in the whole are not large, and of the whole but a small part is trouble- Etat. 50. fome. Small debts are like fmall fhot; they are rattling on every fide, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound: great debts are like cannon; of loud noise, but little danger. You muft, therefore, be enabled to discharge petty debts, that you may have leisure, with fecurity, to struggle with the reft. Neither the great nor little debts difgrace you. I am fure you have my efteem for the courage with which you contracted them, and the fpirit with which you endure them. I wish my esteem could be of more ufe. I have been invited, or have invited myself, to feveral parts of the kingdom; and will not incommode my dear Lucy by coming to Lichfield, while her present lodging is of any use to her. I hope in a few days to be at leifure, and to make visits. Whither I fhall fly is matter of no importance. A man unconnected is at home every where; unless he may be faid to be at home no where. I am forry, dear Sir, that where you have parents, a man of your merits should not have an home. I wish I could give it you. I am, my dear Sir, Affectionately your's, "SAM. JOHNSON." He now refreshed himself by an excursion to Oxford, of which the following fhort characteristical notice, in his own words, is preferved: is now making tea for me. I have been in my gown ever fince I came here. It was at my first coming quite new and handfome. I have fwum thrice, which I had disused for many years. I have propofed to Vanfittart climbing over the wall, but he has refused me. And I have clapped my hands till they are fore, at Dr. King's fpeech"." His negro fervant, Francis Barber, having left him, and been fome time at fea, not preffed as has been fuppofed, but with his own confent, it appears from a letter to John Wilkes, Efq. from Dr. Smollet, that his master kindly interested himself in procuring his release from a state of life of which Johnson always expreffed the utmost abhorrence. He faid, "No man will be a failor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a fhip is being in a jail,, with the chance of being drowned." And at another time, "A man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company "." • Dr. Robert Vanfittart, of the ancient and refpectable family of that name in Berkshire. He was eminent for learning and worth, and much efteemed by Dr. Johnson. 7 Gentleman's Magazine, April 1785. • Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3d edit. p. 126. • Ibid. p. 251. The 1759. Etat. 50. The letter was as follows: "DEAR SIR, Chelsea, March 16, 1759. "I AM again your petitioner, in behalf of that great chum' of literature Samuel Johnson. His black fervant, whofe name is Francis Barber, has been preffed on board the Stag Frigate, Captain Angel, and our lexicographer is in great diftrefs. He fays the boy is a fickly lad, of a delicate frame, and particularly fubject to a malady in his throat, which renders him very unfit for his Majefty's fervice. You know what matter of animofity the faid Johnson has against you; and I dare fay you defire no other opportunity of resenting it than that of laying him under an obligation. He was humble enough to defire my affiftance on this occafion, though he and I were never cater-coufins; and I gave him to understand that I would make application to my friend. Mr. Wilkes, who, perhaps, by his intereft with Dr. Hay and Mr. Elliott, might be able to procure the discharge of his lacquey. It would be fuperfluous to fay more on the fubject, which I leave to your own confideration; but I cannot let flip this opportunity of declaring that I am, with the most inviolable esteem and attachment, dear Sir, "Your affectionate obliged humble fervant, "T. SMOLLET." Mr. Wilkes, who upon all occafions has acted, as a private gentleman, with moft polite liberality, applied to his friend Sir George Hay, then one of the Lords Commiffioners of the Admiralty; and Francis Barber was discharged, as he has told me, without any wish of his own. He recollects the precife time to be three days before King George II. died. He found his old master in chambers in the Inner Temple, and returned to his service. What particular new scheme of life Johnson had in view this year, I have not discovered; but that he meditated one of fome fort, is clear from his private devotions, in which we find, "the change of outward things which I am now to make;" and, "Grant me the grace of thy Holy Spirit, that the courfe which I am now beginning may proceed according to thy laws, and end in the enjoyment of thy favour." But he did not, in fact, make any external or visible change. • Had Dr, Smollet been bred at an English University, he would have known that a chum is a student who lives with another in a chamber common to them both. A chum of literature is nonfenfe. 2 Prayers and Meditations, p. 30 and 40. At In 1759. At this time there being a competition among the architects of London to be employed in the building of Blackfriars-bridge, a question was very Etat. 50. warmly agitated whether femicircular or elliptical arches were preferable. the defign offered by Mr. Mylne the elliptical form was adopted, and therefore it was the great object of his rivals to attack it. Johnfon's regard for his friend Mr. Gwyn induced him to engage in this controverfy against Mr. Mylne'; and after being at confiderable pains to ftudy the fubject, he wrote three feveral letters in the Gazetteer, in oppofition to his plan. If 3 Sir John Hawkins has given a long detail of it, in that manner vulgarly, but fignificantly, called rigmarole; in which, amidst an oftentatious exhibition of arts and artifts, he talks of "proportions of a column being taken from that of the human figure, and adjusted by Nature-masculine and feminine—in a man, sesquio&tave of the head, and in a woman fefquinonal;" nor has he failed to introduce a jargon of musical terms, which do not seem much to correfpond with the fubject, but ferve to make up the heterogeneous mafs. To follow the Knight through all this, would be an useless fatigue to myfelf, and not a little difgufting to my readers. I fhall, therefore, only make a few remarks upon his statement.-He feems to exult in having detected Johnson in procuring " from a person eminently skilled in mathematicks and the principles of architecture, answers to a string of questions drawn up by himself, touching the comparative ftrength of semicircular and elliptical arches." Now I cannot conceive how Johnson could have acted more wifely. Sir John complains that the opinion of that excellent mathematician, Mr. Thomas Simpson, did not preponderate in favour of the femicircular arch. But he should have known, that however eminent Mr. Simpson was in the higher parts of abstract mathematical fcience, he was little verfed in mixed and practical mechanicks. Mr. Muller, of Woolwich Academy, the fcholaftick father of all the great engineers which this country has employed for forty years, decided the queftion by declaring clearly in favour of the elliptical arch. It is ungraciously fuggefted, that Johnson's motive for oppofing Mr. Mylne's fcheme may have been his prejudice against him as a native of North-Britain; when, in truth, as has been stated, he gave the aid of his able pen to a friend, who was one of the candidates; and fo far was he from having any illiberal antipathy to Mr. Mylne, that he afterwards lived with that gentleman upon very agreeable terms of acquaintance, and dined with him at his house. Sir John Hawkins, indeed, gives full vent to his own prejudice in abufing Blackfriarsbridge, calling it "an edifice, in which beauty and symmetry are in vain fought for; by which the citizens of London have perpetuated their own disgrace, and subjected a whole nation to the reproach of foreigners." Whoever has contemplated, placido lumine, this stately, elegant, and airy ftructure, which has fo fine an effect, efpecially on approaching the capital on that quarter, must wonder at fuch unjust and ill-tempered cenfure; and I appeal to all foreigners of good taste, whether this bridge be not one of the moft diftinguished ornaments of London. As to the ftability of the fabrick, it is certain that the City of London took every precaution to have the best Portland ftone for it; but as this is to be found in the quarries belonging to the publick, under the direction of the Lords of the Treafury, it fo happened that parliamentary intereft, which is often the bane of fair purfuits, thwarted their endeavours. Notwithstanding this difadvantage, it is well known that not only has Blackfriars-bridge never funk either in its foundations or in its arches, 1759. Etat. 50. 1760. If it should be remarked that this was a controverfy which lay quite out of Johnson's way, let it be remembered that after all, his employing his powers of reasoning and eloquence upon a fubject which he had studied on the moment, is not more strange than what we often obferve in lawyers, who, as Quicquid agunt homines is the matter of law-fuits, are fometimes obliged to pick up a temporary knowledge of an art or science, of which they understood nothing till their brief was delivered, and appear to be much masters of it. In like manner, members of the legislature frequently introduce and expatiate upon fubjects of which they have informed themselves for the occafion. In 1760 he wrote "An Addrefs of the Painters to George III. on his Acceffion to the Throne of thefe Kingdoms,t" which no monarch ever afcended with more fincere congratulations from his people. Two generations of foreign princes had prepared their minds to rejoice in having again a King, who gloried in being "born a Briton." He alfo wrote for Mr. Baretti the Dedication of his Italian and English Dictionary, to the Marquis of Abreu, then Ambassadour Extraordinary from Spain at the Court of Great-Britain. Johnson was now either very idle, or very bufy with his Shakspeare; for I can find no other publick compofition by him except an account which he gave in the Gentleman's Magazine of Mr. Tytler's acute and able vindication of Mary Queen of Scots.* The generofity of Johnfon's feelings fhines forth in the following fentence: "It has now been fashionable, for near half a century, to defame and vilify the house of Stuart, and to exalt and magnify the reign of Elizabeth. The Stuarts have found few apologists; for the dead cannot pay for praise, and who will, without reward, oppofe the tide of popularity? Yet there remains ftill among us, not wholly extinguished, a zeal for truth, a defire of establishing right in opposition to fashion.” In this year I have not discovered a single private letter written by him to any of his friends. It fhould feem, however, that he had at this period a floating intention of writing a history of the recent and wonderful fucceffes of the British arms in all quarters of the globe; for among his refolutions or memorandums, September 18, there is, "Send for books for Hist. of War 4.” How much is it to be regretted that this intention was not fulfilled. His majestick expreffion would have carried down to the latest posterity the glorious arches, which were so much the subject of contest, but any injuries which it has fuffered from the effects of severe frofts have been already, in fome measure, repaired with founder stone, and every neceffary renewal can be completed at a moderate expence, A Prayers and Meditations, p. 42. atchievements Etat. 51. achievements of his country, with the fame fervent glow which they pro- 1760. duced on the mind at the time. He would have been under no temptation to deviate in any degree from truth, which he held very facred, or to take a licence which a learned divine told me he once feemed, in a conversation, jocularly to allow to hiftorians. "There are (faid he) inexcufable lies, and confecrated lies. For instance, we are told that on the arrival of the news of the unfortunate battle of Fontenoy, every heart beat, and every eye was in Now we know that no man eat his dinner the worse, but there should have been all this concern; and to fay there was, (fmiling) may be reckoned a confecrated lie." tears. This year Mr. Murphy having thought himfelf ill treated by the Reverend "Tranfcendant Genius, whofe prolifick vein "And every Muse presents her facred lore; "Say, pow'rful JOHNSON, whence thy verfe is fraught <<< In chaster numbers, and new-points his rage; "Her innocence exchang'd for guilty state; "Thy nervous phrafe impreffes every foul, Again, towards the conclufion: "Thou then, my friend, who fee'ft the dang'rous ftrife "To the Aonian fount direct my feet, "Say where the Nine thy lonely musings meet? Thy moral fenfe, thy dignity of fong? Tell, for you can, by what unerring art "You wake to finer feelings every heart; Сс "In |