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

[886] See note by Mr. Warton, ante , p. 275. BOSWELL.

[887] ‘On Saturday the 12th, about twelve at night, died Mr. Zachariah Williams, in his eighty-third year, after an illness of eight months, in full possession of his mental faculties. He has been long known to philosophers and seamen for his skill in magnetism, and his proposal to ascertain the longitude by a peculiar system of the variation of the compass. He was a man of industry indefatigable, of conversation inoffensive, patient of adversity and disease, eminently sober, temperate, and pious; and worthy to have ended life with better fortune.’ BOSWELL.

[888] Johnson’s Works , v. 49. Malone, in a note on this passage, says:—‘Johnson appears to have been in this year in great pecuniary distress, having been arrested for debt; on which occasion Richardson became his surety.’ He refers to the following letter in the Richardson Corres , v. 285:—

‘To MR. RICHARDSON.

‘Tuesday, Feb. 19, 1756.

‘I return you my sincerest thanks for the favour which you were pleased to do me two nights ago. Be pleased to accept of this little book, which is all that I have published this winter. The inflammation is come again into my eye, so that I can write very little. I am, Sir, your most obliged and most humble servant,

The ‘little book’ is not (as Mr. Croker suggests) Williams’s Longitude , for it was published in Jan. 1755 ( Gent. Mag . xxv. 47); but the Abridgment of the Dictionary , which was advertised in the Gent. Mag . for Jan. 1756. Murphy says ( Life , p. 86), that he has before him a letter in Johnson’s handwriting, which shows the distress of the man who had written The Rambler , and finished the great work of his Dictionary . It is directed to Mr. Richardson, and is as follows:—

‘SIR,—I am obliged to entreat your assistance. I am now under an arrest for five pounds eighteen shillings. Mr. Strahan, from whom I should have received the necessary help in this case, is not at home, and I am afraid of not finding Mr. Millar. If you will be so good as to send me this sum, I will very gratefully repay you, and add it to all former obligations. I am, Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant,

‘Gough-Square, 16 March.’

In the margin of this letter there is a memorandum in these words:—‘March 16, 1756. Sent six guineas. Witness, Win. Richardson.’ In the European Mag ., vii. 54, there is the following anecdote recorded, for which Steevens most likely was the authority:—‘I remember writing to Richardson’ said Johnson, ‘from a spunging-house; and was so sure of my deliverance through his kindness and liberality, that before his reply was brought I knew I could afford to joke with the rascal who had me in custody, and did so over a pint of adulterated wine, for which at that instant I had no money to pay.’ It is very likely that this anecdote has no other foundation than Johnson’s second letter to Richardson, which is dated, not from a spunging-house, but from his own residence. What kind of fate awaited a man who was thrown into prison for debt is shown by the following passage in Wesley’s Journal (ii. 267), dated Feb. 3, 1753:—‘I visited one in the Marshalsea prison, a nursery of all manner of wickedness. O shame to man, that there should be such a place, such a picture of hell upon earth!’ A few days later he writes:—‘I visited as many more as I could. I found some in their cells under ground; others in their garrets, half starved both with cold and hunger, added to weakness and pain.’

[889] In a Debate on the Copyright Bill on May 16, 1774, Governor Johnstone said:—‘It had been urged that Dr. Johnson had received an after gratification from the booksellers who employed him to compile his Dictionary . He had in his hand a letter from Dr. Johnson, which he read, in which the doctor denied the assertion, but declared that his employers fulfilled their bargain with him, and that he was satisfied.’ Parl. Hist . xvii. 1105.

[890] He more than once attacked them. Thus in An Appeal to the Public , which he wrote for the Gent. Mag . in 1739 ( Works , v. 348), he said:—‘Nothing is more criminal in the opinion of many of them, than for an author to enjoy more advantage from his own works than they are disposed to allow him. This is a principle so well established among them, that we can produce some who threatened printers with their highest displeasure, for having dared to print books for those that wrote them.’ In the Life of Savage ( ib . viii. 132), written in 1744, he writes of the ‘avarice, by which the booksellers are frequently incited to oppress that genius by which they are supported.’ In the Life of Dryden ( ib . vii. 299), written in 1779, he speaks of an improvement. ‘The general conduct of traders was much less liberal in those times than in our own; their views were narrower, and their manners grosser. To the mercantile ruggedness of that race the delicacy of the poet was sometimes exposed.’

[891] Prayers and Meditations , p. 40 [25]. BOSWELL. Johnson wrote to Miss Boothby on Dec. 30, 1755:—‘If I turn my thoughts upon myself, what do I perceive but a poor helpless being, reduced by a blast of wind to weakness and misery?… Mr. Fitzherbert sent to-day to offer me some wine; the people about me say I ought to accept it. I shall therefore be obliged to him if he will send me a bottle.’ Pioszi Letters , ii. 393.

[892] Prayers and Meditations , p. 27. BOSWELL

[893] See post , April 6, 1775. Kit Smart, once a Fellow of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, ended his life in the King’s Bench Prison; ‘where he had owed to a small subscription, of which Dr. Burney was at the head, a miserable pittance beyond the prison allowance. In his latest letter to Dr. Burney, he passionately pleaded for a fellow-sufferer, “whom I myself,” he impressively adds, “have already assisted according to my willing poverty.” In another letter to the same friend he said:—“I bless God for your good nature, which please to take for a receipt.”’ Memoirs of Dr. Burney , i. 205, 280.

[894] In this Essay Johnson writes ( Works , v. 315):—‘I think there is room to question whether a great part of mankind has yet been informed that life is sustained by the fruits of the earth. I was once, indeed, provoked to ask a lady of great eminence for genius, “Whether she knew of what bread is made.”’

[895] In The Universal Visiter this Essay is entitled, ‘Reflections on the Present State of Literature;’ and in Johnson’s Works , v. 355, ‘A Project for the Employment of Authors.’ The whole world, he says, is turning author. Their number is so large that employment must be found for them. ‘There are some reasons for which they may seem particularly qualified for a military life. They are used to suffer want of every kind; they are accustomed to obey the word of command from their patrons and their booksellers; they have always passed a life of hazard and adventure, uncertain what may be their state on the next day…. There are some whom long depression under supercilious patrons has so humbled and crushed, that they will never have steadiness to keep their ranks. But for these men there may be found fifes and drums, and they will be well enough pleased to inflame others to battle, if they are not obliged to fight themselves.’

[896] He added it also to his Life of Pope .

[897] ‘This employment,’ wrote Murphy ( Life , p. 88), ‘engrossed but little of Johnson’s time. He resigned himself to indolence, took no exercise, rose about two, and then received the visits of his friends. Authors long since forgotten waited on him as their oracle, and he gave responses in the chair of criticism. He listened to the complaints, the schemes, and the hopes and fears of a crowd of inferior writers, “who,” he said, in the words of Roger Ascham, “lived, men knew not how, and died obscure, men marked not when.” He believed, that he could give a better history of Grub Street than any man living. His house was filled with a succession of visitors till four or five in the evening. During the whole time he presided at his tea-table.’ In The Rambler , No. 145, Johnson takes the part of these inferior writers:—‘a race of beings equally obscure and equally indigent, who, because their usefulness is less obvious to vulgar apprehensions, live unrewarded and die unpitied, and who have been long exposed to insult without a defender, and to censure without an apologist.’