Life has among its soothing and quiet comforts few things better to give than such a son.' Johnson's Works, viii. 281. In The Idler of January 27, 1759 (No. 41), Johnson shews his grief for his loss. 'The last year, the last day must come. It has come, and is past. The life which made my own life pleasant is at an end, and the gates of death are shut upon my prospects.... Such is the condition of our present existence that life must one time lose its associations, and every inhabitant of the earth must walk downward to the grave alone and unregarded, without any partner of his joy or grief, without any interested witness of his misfortunes or success. Misfortune, indeed, he may yet feel; for where is the bottom of the misery of man? But what is success to him that has none to enjoy it? Happiness is not found in self-contemplation; it is perceived only when it is reflected from another.' In Rasselas (ch. xlv.) he makes a sage say with a sigh:--'Praise is to have an old man an empty sound. I have neither mother to be delighted with the reputation of her son, nor wife to partake the honours of her husband.' He here says once more what he had already said in his Letter to Lord Chesterfield (ante, p. 261), and in the Preface to the Dictionary (ante, p. 297).
[1018] Writing to his Birmingham friend, Mr. Hector, on Oct. 7, 1756, he said:--'I have been thinking every month of coming down into the country, but every month has brought its hinderances. From that kind of melancholy indisposition which I had when we lived together at Birmingham I have never been free, but have always had it operating against my health and my life with more or less violence. I hope however to see all my friends, all that are remaining, in no very long time.' Notes and Queries, 6th S. iii. 301. No doubt his constant poverty and the need that he was under of making 'provision for the day that was passing over him' had had much to do in keeping him from a journey to Lichfield. A passage in one of his letters shews that fourteen years later the stage-coach took twenty-six hours in going from London to Lichfield. (Piozzi Letters, i. 55.) The return journey was very uncertain; for 'our carriages,' he wrote, 'are only such as pass through the place sometimes full and sometimes vacant.' A traveller had to watch for a place (ib. p. 51). As measured by time London was, in 1772, one hour farther from Lichfield than it now is from Marseilles. It is strange, when we consider the long separation between Johnson and his mother, that in Rasselas, written just after her death, he makes Imlac say:-'There is such communication [in Europe] between distant places, that one friend can hardly be said to be absent from another.' Rasselas, chap, xi. His step-daughter, Miss Porter, though for many years she was well off, had never been to London. Post, March 23, 1776. Nay, according to Horace Walpole (Memoirs of the Reign of George III, iv. 327), 'George III. had never seen the sea, nor ever been thirty miles from London at the age of thirty-four.'
[1019] For the letters written at this time by Johnson to his mother and Miss Porter, see Appendix B.
[1020] Rasselas was published in two volumes, duodecimo, and was sold for five shillings. It was reviewed in the Gent. Mag. for April, and was no doubt published in that month. In a letter to Miss Porter dated March 23, 1759 (See Appendix), Johnson says:--'I am going to publish a little story-book, which I will send you when it is out.' I may here remark that the Gent. Mag. was published at the end of the month, or even later. Thus the number for April, 1759, contains news as late as April 30. The name Rasselas Johnson got from Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia. On p. 102 of that book he mentions 'Rassela Christos, Lieutenant-General to Abysinia; Sultan Segued.' On p. 262 he explains the meaning of the first part of the word:--'There is now a Generalissimo established under the title of Ras, or Chief.' The title still exists. Colonel Gordon mentions Ras Arya and Ras Aloula. The Rev. W. West, in his Introduction to Rasselas, p. xxxi (Sampson Low and Co.), says:--'The word Ras, which is common to the Amharic, Arabic, and Hebrew tongues, signifies a head, and hence a prince, chief, or captain.... Sela Christos means either "Picture of Christ," or "For the sake of Christ."'
[1021] Hawkins's Johnson, p. 367.
[1022] See post, June 2, 1781. Finding it then accidentally in a chaise with Mr. Boswell, he read it eagerly. This was doubtless long after his declaration to Sir Joshua Reynolds. MALONE.
[1023] Baretti told Malone that 'Johnson insisted on part of the money being paid immediately, and accordingly received L70. Any other person with the degree of reputation he then possessed would have got L400 for that work, but he never understood the art of making the most of his productions.' Prior's Malone, p. 160. Some of the other circumstances there related by Baretti are not correct.
[1024] Hawkesworth received L6000 for his revision of Cook's Voyages; post, May 7, 1773.