[48] Nobody, that is to say, but Johnson. Post, p. 24, note 2.
[49] Of this service Johnson recorded:--'In the morning I had at church some radiations of comfort.' Pr. and Med. p. 146.
[50] Baretti, in a marginal note on Piozzi Letters, i. 311, says:-- 'Mr. Thrale, who was a worldly man, and followed the direction of his own feelings with no philosophical or Christian distinctions, having now lost the strong hope of being one day succeeded in the profitable Brewery by the only son he had left, gave himself silently up to his grief, and fell in a few years a victim to it.' In a second note (ii. 22) he says:--'The poor man could never subdue his grief on account of his son's death.'
[51] A gentleman, who from his extraordinary stores of knowledge, has been stiled omniscient. Johnson, I think very properly, altered it to all-knowing, as it is a verbum solenne, appropriated to the Supreme Being. BOSWELL.
[52] Mrs. Thrale wrote to him on May 3:--'Should you write about Streatham and Croydon, the book would be as good to me as a journey to Rome, exactly; for 'tis Johnson, not Falkland's Islands that interest us, and your style is invariably the same. The sight of Rome might have excited more reflections indeed than the sight of the Hebrides, and so the book might be bigger, but it would not be better a jot.' Piozzi Letters, i 318.
[53] Hawkins says (Life, p. 84) that 'Johnson was never greedy of money, but without money could not be stimulated to write. I have been told by a clergyman with whom he had been long acquainted, that, being (sic) to preach on a particular occasion, he applied to him for help. "I will write a sermon for thee," said Johnson, "but thou must pay me for it."' See post, May 1, 1783. Horace Walpole (Letters, viii. 150) records an anecdote that he had from Hawkins:--'When Dr. Johnson was at his work on his Shakespeare, Sir John said to him, "Well! Doctor, now you have finished your Dictionary, I suppose you will labour your present work con amore for your reputation." "No Sir," said Johnson, "nothing excites a man to write but necessity."' Walpole then relates the anecdote of the clergyman, and speaks of Johnson as 'the mercenary.' Walpole's sinecure offices thirty-nine years before this time brought him in 'near, L2000 a year.' In 1782 he wrote that his office of Usher of the Exchequer was worth L1800 a year. Letters, i. lxxix, lxxxii.
[54] Swift wrote in 1735, when he was sixty-seven:--'I never got a farthing by anything I writ, except one about eight years ago, and that was by Mr. Pope's prudent management for me.' Works, xix. 171. It was, I conjecture, Gulliver's Travels. Hume, in 1757, wrote:--'I am writing the History of England from the accession of Henry VII. I undertook this work because I was tired of idleness, and found reading alone, after I had often perused all good books (which I think is soon done), somewhat a languid occupation.' J. H. Burton's Hume, ii. 33.
[55] This Mr. Ellis was, I believe, the last of that profession called Scriveners, which is one of the London companies, but of which the business is no longer carried on separately, but is transacted by attornies and others. He was a man of literature and talents. He was the authour of a Hudibrastick version of Maphaesus's Canto, in addition to the AEneid; of some poems in Dodsley's Collections; and various other small pieces; but being a very modest man, never put his name to anything. He shewed me a translation which he had made of Ovid's Epistles, very prettily done. There is a good engraved portrait of him by Pether, from a picture by Fry, which hangs in the hall of the Scriveners' company. I visited him October 4, 1790, in his ninety-third year, and found his judgment distinct and clear, and his memory, though faded so as to fail him occasionally, yet, as he assured me, and I indeed perceived, able to serve him very well, after a little recollection. It was agreeable to observe, that he was free from the discontent and fretfulness which too often molest old age. He in the summer of that year walked to Rotherhithe, where he dined, and walked home in the evening. He died on the 31st of December, 1791. BOSWELL. The version of Maphaesus's 'bombastic' additional Canto is advertised in the Gent. Mag. 1758, p. 233. The engraver of Mr. Ellis's portrait in the first two editions is called Peffer.
[56] 'Admiral Walsingham boasted that he had entertained more miscellaneous parties than any other man in London. At one time he had received the Duke of Cumberland, Dr. Johnson, Mr. Nairne the optician, and Leoni the singer. It was at his table that Dr. Johnson made that excellent reply to a pert coxcomb who baited him during dinner. "Pray now," said he to the Doctor, "what would you give, old gentleman, to be as young and sprightly as I am?" "Why, Sir, I think," replied Johnson, "I would almost be content to be as foolish."' Cradock's Memoirs, i. 172.
[57] 'Dr. Johnson almost always prefers the company of an intelligent man of the world to that of a scholar.' Mme.