[1147] 'Lich, a dead carcase; whence Lichfield, the field of the dead, a city in Staffordshire, so named from martyred Christians. Salve magna parens.' It is curious that in the Abridgment of the Dictionary he struck out this salutation, though he left the rest of the article. Salve magna parens, (Hail, mighty parent) is from Virgil's Georgics, ii. 173. The Rev. T. Twining, when at Lichfield in 1797, says:--'I visited the famous large old willow-tree, which Johnson, they say, used to kiss when he came to Lichfield.' Recreations and Studies of a Country Clergyman of the XVIII Century, p. 227.
[1148] The following circumstance, mutually to the honour of Johnson, and the corporation of his native city, has been communicated to me by the Reverend Dr. Vyse, from the Town-Clerk:--'Mr. Simpson has now before him, a record of the respect and veneration which the Corporation of Lichfield, in the year 1767, had for the merits and learning of Dr. Johnson. His father built the corner-house in the Market-place, the two fronts of which, towards Market and Broad-market-street, stood upon waste land of the Corporation, under a forty years' lease, which was then expired. On the 15th of August, 1767, at a common-hall of the bailiffs and citizens, it was ordered (and that without any solicitation,) that a lease should be granted to Samuel Johnson, Doctor of Laws, of the encroachments at his house, for the term of ninety-nine years, at the old rent, which was five shillings. Of which, as Town-Clerk, Mr. Simpson had the honour and pleasure of informing him, and that he was desired to accept it, without paying any fine on the occasion, which lease was afterwards granted, and the Doctor died possessed of this property.' BOSWELL.
[1149] See vol. i. p. 37. BOSWELL.
[1150] According to Miss Seward, who was Mr. White's cousin, 'Johnson once called him "the rising strength of Lichfield."' Seward's Letters, i. 335.
[1151] The Rev. R. Warner, who visited Lichfield in 1801, gives in his Tour through the Northern Counties, i. 105, a fuller account. He is clearly wrong in the date of its occurrence, and in one other matter, yet his story may in the main be true. He says that Johnson's friends at Lichfield missed him one morning; the servants said that he had set off at a very early hour, whither they knew not. Just before supper he returned. He informed his hostess of his breach of filial duty, which had happened just fifty years before on that very day. 'To do away the sin of this disobedience, I this day went,' he said, 'in a chaise to--, and going into the market at the time of high business uncovered my head, and stood with it bare an hour, before the stall which my father had formerly used, exposed to the sneers of the standers-by, and the inclemency of the weather.' This penance may recall Dante's lines,--
'Quando vivea piu glorioso, disse, Liberamente nel campo di Siena, Ogni vergogna deposta, s'affisse.' '"When at his glory's topmost height," said he, "Respect of dignity all cast aside, Freely he fix'd him on Sienna's plain."'
CARY. Dante, Purgatory. Cant. xi. l. 133.
[1152]
'How instinct varies in the grovelling swine, Compared, half-reasoning elephant, with thine.'
Pope, Essay on Man, i. 221.
[1153] See ante, iii. 153, 296.
[1154] Mr. Burke suggested to me as applicable to Johnson, what Cicero, in his CATO MAJOR, says of Appius:--'Intentum enim animum tanquam arcum habebat, nec languescens succumbebat senectuti;' repeating, at the same time, the following noble words in the same passage:--'Ita enim senectus honesta est, si se ipsa defendit, si jus suum retinet, si nemini emancipata est, si usque ad extremum vitae spiritum vindicet jus suum.' BOSWELL. The last line runs in the original:-'si usque ad ultimum spiritum dominatur in suos.' Cato Major, xi. 38.
[1155]
'atrocem animum Catonis.' 'Cato-- Of spirit unsubdued.'
FRANCIS. Horace, 2 Odes, i. 24.
[1156] Yet Baretti, who knew Johnson well, in a MS. note on Piozzi Letters, i.315, says:--'If ever Johnson took any delight in anything it was to converse with some old acquaintance. New people he never loved to be in company with, except ladies, when disposed to caress and flatter him.'
[1157] Johnson, thirty-four years earlier, wrote:--'I think there is some reason for questioning whether the body and mind are not so proportioned that the one can bear all that can be inflicted on the other; whether virtue cannot stand its ground as long as life, and whether a soul well principled will not be separated sooner than subdued.' The Rambler, No. 32. He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Aug. 14, 1780:--'But what if I am seventy-two; I remember Sulpitius says of Saint Martin (now that's above your reading), Est animus victor annorum, et senectuti cedere nescius. Match me that among your young folks.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 177. On Sept. 2, 1784, he wrote to Mr. Sastres the Italian master:--'I have hope of standing the English winter, and of seeing you, and reading Petrarch at Bolt-court.' Ib.