D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 333-339.
APPENDIX F.
(Notes on Boswell's note on pages 403-405.)
[F-1] In a letter quoted in Mr. Croker's Boswell, p. 427, Dr. Johnson calls Thomas Johnson 'cousin,' and says that in the last sixteen months he had given him L40. He mentions his death in 1779. Piozzi Letters, ii. 45.
[F-2] Hawkins (Life, p. 603) says that Elizabeth Herne was Johnson's first-cousin, and that he had constantly--how long he does not say--contributed L15 towards her maintenance.
[F-3] For Mauritius Lowe, see ante, iii. 324, and iv. 201.
[F-4] To Mr. Windham, two days earlier, he had given a copy of the New Testament, saying:--'Extremum hoc munus morientis habeto.' Windham's Diary, p. 28.
[F-5] For Mrs. Gardiner see ante, i. 242.
[F-6] Mr. John Desmoulins was the son of Mrs. Desmoulins (ante, iii. 222, 368), and the grandson of Johnson's god-father, Dr. Swinfen (ante, i. 34). Johnson mentions him in a letter to Mrs. Thrale in 1778. 'Young Desmoulins is taken in an under-something of Drury Lane; he knows not, I believe, his own denomination.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 25.
[F-7] The reference is to The Rambler, No. 41 (not 42 as Boswell says), where Johnson mentions 'those vexations and anxieties with which all human enjoyments are polluted.'
[F-8] Bishop Sanderson described his soul as 'infinitely polluted with sin.' Walton's Lives, ed. 1838, p. 396.
[F-9] Hume, writing in 1742 about his Essays Moral and Political, says:--
'Innys, the great bookseller in Paul's Church-yard, wonders there is not a new edition, for that he cannot find copies for his customers.' J.H. Burton's Hume, i. 143.
[F-10] Nichols (Lit. Anec. ii. 554) says that, on Dec. 7,
'Johnson asked him whether any of the family of Faden the printer were living. Being told that the geographer near Charing Cross was Faden's son, he said, after a short pause:--"I borrowed a guinea of his father near thirty years ago; be so good as to take this, and pay it for me."'
[F-11] Nowhere does Hawkins more shew the malignancy of his character than in his attacks on Johnson's black servant, and through him on Johnson. With the passage in which this offensive caveat is found he brings his work to a close. At the first mention of Frank (Life, p. 328) he says:--
'His first master had in great humanity made him a Christian, and his last for no assignable reason, nay rather in despite of nature, and to unfit him for being useful according to his capacity, determined to make him a scholar.'
But Hawkins was a brutal fellow. See ante, i. 27, note 2, and 28, note 1.
[F-12] Johnson had written to Taylor on Oct. 23 of this year:--
'"Coming down from a very restless night I found your letter, which made me a little angry. You tell me that recovery is in my power. This indeed I should be glad to hear if I could once believe it. But you mean to charge me with neglecting or opposing my own health. Tell me, therefore, what I do that hurts me, and what I neglect that would help me." This letter is endorsed by Taylor: "This is the last letter. My answer, which were (sic) the words of advice he gave to Mr. Thrale the day he dyed, he resented extremely from me."' Mr. Alfred Morrison's Collection of Autographs, &c., ii. 343.
'The words of advice' which were given to Mr. Thrale the day before the fatal fit seized him, were that he should abstain from full meals. Ante, iv. 84, note 4. Johnson's resentment of Taylor's advice may account for the absence of his name in his will.
[F-13] They were sold in 650 Lots, in a four days' sale. Besides the books there were 146 portraits, of which 61 were framed and glazed. These prints in their frames were sold in lots of 4, 8, and even 10 together, though certainly some of them--and perhaps many--were engravings from Reynolds. The Catalogue of the sale is in the Bodleian Library.
APPENDIX G.
(Notes on Boswell's note on page 408.)
[G-1] Mrs. Piozzi records (Anecdotes, p. 120) that Johnson told her,--
'When Boyse was almost perishing with hunger, and some money was produced to purchase him a dinner, he got a bit of roast beef, but could not eat it without ketch-up; and laid out the last half-guinea he possessed in truffles and mushrooms, eating them in bed too, for want of clothes, or even a shirt to sit up in.'
Hawkins (Life, p. 159) gives 1740 as the year of Boyse's destitution.
'He was,' he says, 'confined to a bed which had no sheets; here, to procure food, he wrote; his posture sitting up in bed, his only covering a blanket, in which a hole was made to admit of the employment of his arm.'
Two years later Boyse wrote the following verses to Cave from a spunging-house:--
'Hodie, teste coelo summo, Sine pane, sine nummo, Sorte positus infeste, Scribo tibi dolens moeste. Fame, bile tumet jecur: Urbane, mitte opem, precor. Tibi enim cor humanum Non a malis alienum: Mihi mens nee male grato, Pro a te favore dato. Ex gehenna debitoria, Vulgo, domo spongiatoria.'
He adds that he hopes to have his Ode on the British Nation done that day.