I love her and think on her when I am alone; hope we shall be very happy together and mind our books.' Ib. p. 173.
[1233] See ante, iv. 421, for the inscription on an urn erected by Mr. Myddelton 'on the banks of a rivulet where Johnson delighted to stand and repeat verses.' On Sept. 18, 1777, Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale: --'Mr. ----'s erection of an urn looks like an intention to bury me alive; I would as willingly see my friend, however benevolent and hospitable, quietly inurned. Let him think for the present of some more acceptable memorial.' Piozzi Letters, i. 371.
[1234] Johnson wrote on Oct. 24, 1778:--'My two clerical friends Darby and Worthington have both died this month. I have known Worthington long, and to die is dreadful. I believe he was a very good man.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 26.
[1235] Thomas, the second Lord Lyttelton. DUPPA.
[1236] Mr. Gwynn the architect was a native of Shrewsbury, and was at this time completing a bridge across the Severn, called the English Bridge: besides this bridge, he built one at Acham, over the Severn, near to Shrewsbury; and the bridges at Worcester, Oxford [Magdalen Bridge], and Henley. DUPPA. He was also the architect of the Oxford Market, which was opened in 1774. Oxford during the Last Century, ed. 1859, p. 45. Johnson and Boswell travelled to Oxford with him in March, 1776. Ante, ii. 438. In 1778 he got into some difficulties, in which Johnson tried to help him, as is shewn by the following autograph letter in the possession of my friend Mr. M. M. Holloway:--
'SIR,
'Poor Mr. Gwyn is in great distress under the weight of the late determination against him, and has still hopes that some mitigation may be obtained. If it be true that whatever has by his negligence been amiss, may be redressed for a sum much less than has been awarded, the remaining part ought in equity to be returned, or, what is more desirable, abated. When the money is once paid, there is little hope of getting it again.
'The load is, I believe, very hard upon him; he indulges some flattering opinions that by the influence of his academical friends it may be lightened, and will not be persuaded but that some testimony of my kindness may be beneficial. I hope he has been guilty of nothing worse than credulity, and he then certainly deserves commiseration. I never heard otherwise than that he was an honest man, and I hope that by your countenance and that of other gentlemen who favour or pity him some relief may be obtained.
'I am, Sir, 'Your most humble servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.' 'Bolt Court, Fleet-street, 'Jan. 30, 1778.'
[1237] An ancestor of mine, a nursery-gardener, Thomas Wright by name, after whom my grandfather, Thomas Wright Hill, was called, planted this walk. The tradition preserved in my family is that on his wedding-day he took six men with him and planted these trees. When blamed for keeping the wedding-dinner waiting, he answered, that if what he had been doing turned out well, it would be of far more value than a wedding-dinner.
[1238] The Rector of St. Chad's, in Shrewsbury. He was appointed Master of Pembroke College, Oxford, in the following year. See ante, ii. 441.
[1239] 'I have heard Dr. Johnson protest that he never had quite as much as he wished of wall-fruit except once in his life, and that was when we were all together at Ombersley.' Piozzi's Anec. p. 103. Mrs. Thrale wrote to him in 1778:--'Mr. Scrase gives us fine fruit; I wished you my pear yesterday; but then what would one pear have done for you?' Piozzi Letters, ii. 36. It seems unlikely that Johnson should not at Streatham have had all the wall-fruit that he wished.
[1240] This visit was not to Lord Lyttelton, but to his uncle [afterwards by successive creations, Lord Westcote, and Lord Lyttelton], the father of the present Lord Lyttelton, who lived at a house called Little Hagley. DUPPA. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale in 1771:--'I would have been glad to go to Hagley in compliance with Mr. Lyttelton's kind invitation, for beside the pleasure of his conversation I should have had the opportunity of recollecting past times, and wandering per montes notos et flumina nota, of recalling the images of sixteen, and reviewing my conversations with poor Ford.' Piozzi Letters, i. 42. He had been at school at Stourbridge, close by Hagley. Ante, i. 49. See Walpole's Letters, ix. 123, for an anecdote of Lord Westcote.
[1241] Horace Walpole, writing of Hagley in Sept. 1753 (Letters, ii. 352), says:--'There is extreme taste in the park: the seats are not the best, but there is not one absurdity. There is a ruined castle, built by Miller, that would get him his freedom even of Strawberry [Walpole's own house at Twickenham]: it has the true rust of the Barons' Wars.'
[1242] 'Mrs. Lyttelton forced me to play at whist against my liking, and her husband took away Johnson's candle that he wanted to read by at the other end of the room. Those, I trust, were the offences.' Piozzi MS. CROKER.
[1243] Johnson (Works, viii. 409) thus writes of Shenstone and the Leasowes:--'He began to point his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his walks, and to wind his waters; which he did with such judgment and such fancy as made his little domain the envy of the great and the admiration of the skilful; a place to be visited by travellers and copied by designers.