James Boswell - THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON - All 6 Volumes in One Edition

[238] ‘March 16, 1728-9. Yesterday in a Convocation Mr. Wm. Jorden of Pembroke Coll. was elected the Univ. of Oxford rector of Astocke in com. Wilts (which belongs to a Roman Catholic family).’ Hearne’s Remains , iii. 17. His fellowship was filled up on Dec. 23, 1730. Boswell’s statement therefore is inaccurate. If Johnson remained at college till Nov. 1731, he would have really been for at least ten months Adams’s pupil. We may assume that as his name remained on the books after Jorden left so he was nominally transferred to Adams. It is worthy of notice that Thomas Warton, in the account that he gives of Johnson’s visit to Oxford in 1754, says:—‘He much regretted that his first tutor was dead.’

[239] According to Hawkins ( Life , pp. 17, 582 and post , Dec. 9, 1784) Johnson’s father was at one time a bankrupt. Johnson, in the epitaph that he wrote for him ( post , Dec. 2, 1784) describes him as ‘bibliopola admodum peritus,’ but ‘rebus adversis diu conflictatus.’ He certainly did not die a bankrupt, as is shown by his leaving property to his widow and son, and also by the following MS. letter, that is preserved with two others of the same kind in Pembroke College.

Ashby, April 19, 1736.

Good Sr.,

I must truble you again, my sister who desiurs her survis to you, & begs you will be so good if you can to pravale with Mr. Wumsley to paye you the little money due to her you may have an opertunity to speak to him & it will be a great truble for me to have a jerney for it when if he pleasd he might paye it you, it is a poore case she had but little left by Mr. Johnson but his books (not but he left her all he had) & those sold at a poore reat, and be kept out of so small a sume by a gentleman so well able to paye, if you will doe yr best for the widow will be varey good in you, which will oblige yr reall freund JAMES BATE.

To Mr. John Newton

a Sider Seller at Litchfield.

Pd. £5 to Mr. Newton.

In another hand is written,

To Gilbert Walmesley Esq.

at Lichfield.

And in a third hand,

Pd. £5 to Mr. Newton.

The exact amount claimed, as is Shewn by the letter, dated Jan. 31, 1735, was £5 6s. 4d. There is a yet earlier letter demanding payment of £5 6s. 4d. as ‘due to me’ for books, signed D. Johnson, dated Swarkstone, Aug. 21, 1733. It must be the same account. Perhaps D. Johnson was the executor. He writes from Ashby, where Michael Johnson had a branch business. But I know of no other mention of him or of James Bate. John Newton was the father of the Bishop of Bristol. Post , June 3,1784, and Bishop Newton’s Works , i. I.

[240] Johnson, in a letter to Dr. Taylor, dated Aug. 18, 1763, advised him, in some trouble that he had with his wife, ‘to consult our old friend Mr. Howard. His profession has acquainted him with matrimonial law, and he is in himself a cool and wise man.’ Notes and Queries , 6th S. v. 342. See post , March 20, 1778, for mention of his son.

[241] See post , Dec. 1, 1743, note. Robert Levett, made famous by Johnson’s lines ( post , Jan. 20, 1782), was not of this family.

[242] Mr. Warton informs me, ‘that this early friend of Johnson was entered a Commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, aged seventeen, in 1698; and is the authour of many Latin verse translations in the Gent. Mag . (vol. xv. 102). One of them is a translation of:

‘My time, O ye Muses, was happily spent.’ &c.

He died Aug, 3, 1751, and a monument to his memory has been erected in the Cathedral of Lichfield, with an inscription written by Mr. Seward, one of the Prebendaries. BOSWELL.

[243] Johnson’s Works , vii. 380.

[244] See post , 1780, note at end of Mr. Langton’s ‘Collection.’

[245] See post , 1743.

[246] See post April 24, 1779.

[247] Hawkins ( Life , p. 61) says that in August, 1738 (? 1739), Johnson went to Appleby, in Leicestershire, to apply for the mastership of Appleby School. This was after he and his wife had removed to London. It is likely that he visited Ashbourne.

[248] ‘Old Meynell’ is mentioned, post , 1780, in Mr. Langton’s ‘Collection,’ as the author of ‘the observation, “For anything I see, foreigners are fools;”’ and ‘Mr. Meynell,’ post , April 1, 1779, as saying that ‘The chief advantage of London is, that a man is always so near his burrow .’

[249] See post , under March 16, 1759, note, and April 21, 1773. Mr. Alleyne Fitzherbert was created Lord St. Helens.

[250] See post , 1780, end of Mr. Langton’s ‘Collection.’

[251] Johnson, writing to Dr. Taylor on July 31, 1756, said, ‘I find myself very unwilling to take up a pen, only to tell my friends that I am well, and indeed I never did exchange letters regularly but with dear Miss Boothby.’ Notes and Queries , 6th S. v. 304. At the end of the Piozzi Letters are given some of his letters to her. They were republished together with her letters to him in An Account of the Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson , 1805.

[252] The words of Sir John Hawkins, P. 316. BOSWELL. ‘When Mr. Thrale once asked Johnson which had been the happiest period of his past life, he replied, “it was that year in which he spent one whole evening with Molly Aston. That, indeed,” said he, “was not happiness, it was rapture; but the thoughts of it sweetened the whole year.” I must add that the evening alluded to was not passed tête-à-tête, but in a select company of which the present Lord Kilmorey was one. “Molly,” says Dr. Johnson, “was a beauty and a scholar, and a wit and a whig; and she talked all in praise of liberty; and so I made this epigram upon her—She was the loveliest creature I ever saw—

‘Liber ut esse velim suasisti

pulchra Maria;

Ut maneam liber—pulchra Maria

vale.’

‘Will it do this way in English, Sir,’ said I:—

‘Persuasions to freedom fall oddly

from you;

If freedom we seek—fair Maria,

adieu!’

‘It will do well enough,’ replied he; ‘but it is translated by a lady, and the ladies never loved Molly Aston.’” Piozzi’s Anec ., p. 157. See post , May 8, 1778.

[253] Sir Thomas Aston, Bart., who died in January, 1724-5, left one son, named Thomas also, and eight daughters. Of the daughters, Catherine married Johnson’s friend, the Hon. Henry Hervey [_post, 1737]; Margaret, Gilbert Walmsley. Another of these ladies married the Rev. Mr. Gastrell [the man who cut down Shakspeare’s mulberry tree, post , March 25, 1776]; Mary, or Molly Aston, as she was usually called, became the wife of Captain Brodie of the navy. MALONE.

[254] Luke vi. 35.

[255] If this was in 1732 it was on the morrow of the day on which he received his share of his father’s property, ante , p. 80. A letter published in Notes and Queries , 6th S. x. 421, shews that for a short time he was tutor to the son of Mr. Whitby of Heywood.

[256] Bishop Hurd does not praise Blackwall, but the Rev. Mr. Budworth, headmaster of the grammar school at Brewood, who had himself been bred under Blackwall. MALONE. Mr. Nichols relates ( post , Dec. 1784) that Johnson applied for the post of assistant to Mr. Budworth.

[257] See Gent. Mag . Dec. 1784, p. 957. BOSWELL.

[258] See ante , p. 78.

[259] The patron’s manners were those of the neighbourhood. Hutton, writing of this town in 1770, says,—‘The inhabitants set their dogs at me merely because I was a stranger. Surrounded with impassable roads, no intercourse with man to humanize the mind, no commerce to smooth their rugged manners, they continue the boors of nature.’ Life, of W. Hutton , p. 45.