For my part, (said he,) I never was master of a pair of spurs, but once; and they are now at the bottom of the ocean. By the carelessness of Boswell's servant, they were dropped from the end of the boat, on our return from the Isle of Sky [G-4]."'
The late Reverend Mr. Samuel Badcock [G-5], having been introduced to Dr. Johnson, by Mr. Nichols, some years before his death, thus expressed himself in a letter to that gentleman:--
'How much I am obliged to you for the favour you did me in introducing me to Dr. Johnson! Tantum vidi Virgilium [G-6]. But to have seen him, and to have received a testimony of respect from him, was enough. I recollect all the conversation, and shall never forget one of his expressions. Speaking of Dr. P---- [Priestley], (whose writings, I saw, he estimated at a low rate,) he said, "You have proved him as deficient in probity as he is in learning [G-7]." I called him an "Index-scholar [G-8];" but he was not willing to allow him a claim even to that merit. He said, that "he borrowed from those who had been borrowers themselves, and did not know that the mistakes he adopted had been answered by others." I often think of our short, but precious, visit to this great man. I shall consider it as a kind of an aera in my life.' BOSWELL. [Note: See Appendix G for notes on this footnote.]
[1241] See ante, i. 152, 501.
[1242] He wrote to Dr. Taylor on Feb. 17, 1776:--'Keep yourself cheerful. Lie in bed with a lamp, and when you cannot sleep and are beginning to think, light your candle and read. At least light your candle; a man is perhaps never so much harrassed (sic) by his own mind in the light as in the dark.' Notes and Queries, 6th S. v. 423.
[1243] Mr. Croker records 'the following communication from Mr. Hoole himself':--'I must mention an incident which shews how ready Johnson was to make amends for any little incivility. When I called upon him, the morning after he had pressed me rather roughly to read louder, he said, "I was peevish yesterday; you must forgive me: when you are as old and as sick as I am, perhaps you may be peevish too." I have heard him make many apologies of this kind.'
[1244] 'To his friend Dr. Burney he said a few hours before he died, taking the Doctor's hands within his, and casting his eyes towards Heaven with a look of the most fervent piety, "My dear friend, while you live do all the good you can." Seward's Biographiana, p. 601
[1245] Mr. Hoole, senior, records of this day:--'Dr. Johnson exhorted me to lead a better life than he had done. "A better life than you, my dear Sir:" I repeated. He replied warmly, "Don't compliment not." Croker's Boswell, p. 844
[1246] See ante, p. 293
[1247] The French historian, Jacques-Auguste de Thou, 1553-1617, author of Historia sui Temporis in 138 books.
[1248] See ante, ii. 42, note 2.
[1249] Mr. Hutton was occasionally admitted to the royal breakfast-table. "Hutton," said the King to him one morning, "is it true that you Moravians marry without any previous knowledge of each other?" "Yes, may it please your majesty," returned Hutton; "our marriages are quite royal" Hannah More's Memoirs, i. 318. One of his female-missionaries for North American said to Dr. Johnson:--'Whether my Saviour's service may be best carried on here, or on the coast of Labrador, 'tis Mr. Hutton's business to settle. I will do my part either in a brick-house or a snow-house with equal alacrity.' Piozzi's Synonymy, ii. 120. He is described also in the Memoirs of Dr. Burney, i. 251, 291.
[1250] Ante, ii. 402.
[1251] Burke said of Hussey, who was his friend and correspondent, that in his character he had made 'that very rare union of the enlightened statesman with the ecclesiastic.' Burke's Corres. iv. 270.
[1252] Boswell refers, I believe, to Fordyce's epitaph on Johnson in the Gent. Mag. 1785, p. 412, or possibly to an Ode on p. 50 of his poems.
[1253] 'Being become very weak and helpless it was thought necessary that a man should watch with him all night; and one was found in the neighbourhood for half a crown a night.' Hawkins's Life of Johnson, p. 589.
[1254] It was on Nov. 30 that he repeated these lines. See Croker's Boswell, p. 843.
[1255] British Synonymy, i. 359. Mrs. Piozzi, to add to the wonder, says that these verses were 'improviso,' forgetting that Johnson wrote to her on Aug 8, 1780 (Piozzi Letters, ii. 175):--'You have heard in the papers how --- is come to age. I have enclosed a short song of congratulation which you must not shew to anybody. It is odd that it should come into anybody's head. I hope you will read it with candour; it is, I believe, one of the author's first essays in that way of writing, and a beginner is always to be treated with tenderness.' That it was Sir John Lade who had come of age is shewn by the entry of his birth, Aug. 1, 1759, in the Gent. Mag. 1759, p. 392. He was the nephew and ward of Mr. Thrale, who seemed to think that Miss Burney would make him a good wife. (Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 79.) According to Mr. Hayward (Life of Piozzi, i.