20, 1769.
[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.
'DEAR SIR,
'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,
'SAM. JOHNSON.'
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,
'SAMUEL JOHNSON.
'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.