The Bishop gives this character of Dr. Grainger:--'He was not only a man of genius and learning, but had many excellent virtues; being one of the most generous, friendly, and benevolent men I ever knew.' BOSWELL.
[1339] Dr. Johnson said to me, 'Percy, Sir, was angry with me for laughing at The Sugar-cane: for he had a mind to make a great thing of Grainger's rats.' BOSWELL. Johnson helped Percy in writing a review of this poem in 1764 (ante, i. 481).
[1340] In Poems by Christopher Smart, ed. 1752, p. 100. One line may serve as a sample of the whole poem, Writing of 'Bacchus, God of hops,' the poet says:--
''Tis he shall gen'rate the buxom beer.'
[1341] See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 22.
[1342] Henley in Arden, thirteen miles from Birmingham.
[1343] Mr. Hector's house was in the Square--now known as the Old Square. It afterwards formed a part of the Stork Hotel, but it was pulled down when Corporation Street was made. A marble tablet had been placed on the house at the suggestion of the late Mr. George Dawson, marking the spot where 'Edmund Hector was the host, Samuel Johnson the guest.' This tablet, together with the wainscoting, the door, and the mantelpiece of one of the rooms, was set up in Aston Hall, at the Johnson Centenary, in a room that is to be known as Dr. Johnson's Room.
[1344] My worthy friend Mr. Langton, to whom I am under innumerable obligations in the course of my Johnsonian History, has furnished me with a droll illustration about this question. An honest carpenter, after giving some anecdote in his presence of the ill-treatment which he had received from a clergyman's wife, who was a noted termagant, and whom he accused of unjust dealing in some transaction with him, added, 'I took care to let her know what I thought of her.' And being asked, 'What did you say?' answered, 'I told her she was a scoundrel.' BOSWELL.
[1345] 'As to the baptism of infants, it is a mere human tradition, for which neither precept nor practice is to be found in all the Scripture.' Barclay's Apology, Proposition xii, ed. 1703, p. 409.
[1346] John iii. 30. BOSWELL.
[1347] Mr. Seward (Anec. ii. 223) says that 'Dr. Johnson always supposed that Mr. Richardson had Mr. Nelson in his thoughts when he delineated the character of Sir Charles Grandison.' Robert Nelson was born in 1656, and died in 1715.
[1348] 'Mr. Arkwright pronounced Johnson to be the only person who on a first view understood both the principle and powers of machinery.' Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 215. Arthur Young, who visited Birmingham in 1768, writes:--'I was nowhere more disappointed than at Birmingham, where I could not gain any intelligence even of the most common nature, through the excessive jealousy of the manufacturers. It seems the French have carried off several of their fabricks, and thereby injured the town not a little. This makes them so cautious that they will show strangers scarce anything.' Tour through the North of England, iii. 279.
[1349] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale (year not given):--'I have passed one day at Birmingham with my old friend Hector--there's a name--and his sister, an old love. My mistress is grown much older than my friend,
---"O quid habes illius, illius Quae spirabat amores Quae me surpuerat mihi."'
'Of her, of her what now remains, Who breathed the loves, who charmed the swains, And snatched me from my heart?'
FRANCIS, Horace, Odes, iv. 13. 18. Piozzi Letters, i. 290.
[1350] Some years later he wrote:--'Mrs. Careless took me under her care, and told me when I had tea enough.' Ib. ii. 205.
[1351] See ante, ii. 362, note 3.
[1352] Johnson, in a letter to Hector, on March 7 of this year, described Congreve as 'very dull, very valetudinary, and very recluse, willing, I am afraid, to forget the world, and content to be forgotten by it, to repose in that sullen sensuality into which men naturally sink who think disease a justification of indulgence, and converse only with those who hope to prosper by indulging them ... Infirmity will come, but let us not invite it; indulgence will allure us, but let us turn resolutely away. Time cannot always be defeated, but let us not yield till we are conquered.' Notes and Queries, 6th S., iii. 401.
[1353] In the same letter he said:--'I hope dear Mrs. Careless is well, and now and then does not disdain to mention my name. It is happy when a brother and sister live to pass their time at our age together. I have nobody to whom I can talk of my first years--when I do to Lichfield, I see the old places but find nobody that enjoyed them with me.'
[1354] I went through the house where my illustrious friend was born, with a reverence with which it doubtless will long be visited. An engraved view of it, with the adjacent buildings, is in The Gent. Mag. for Feb. 1875. BOSWELL.
[1355] The scene of Farquhar's Beaux Stratagem is laid in Lichfield. The passage in which the ale is praised begins as follows:--
'Aimwell. I have heard your town of Lichfield much famed for ale; I think I'll taste that.