however, she always retained her affection for them. While they [Mr. and Mrs. Johnson] resided in Gough Square, her son, the officer, knocked at the door, and asked the maid if her mistress was at home. She answered, "Yes, Sir, but she is sick in bed." "Oh," says he, "if it's so, tell her that her son Jervis called to know how she did;" and was going away. The maid begged she might run up to tell her mistress, and, without attending his answer, left him. Mrs. Johnson, enraptured to hear her son was below, desired the maid to tell him she longed to embrace him. When the maid descended the gentleman was gone, and poor Mrs. Johnson was much agitated by the adventure; it was the only time he ever made an effort to see her. Dr. [Mr.] Johnson did all he could to console his wife, but told Mrs. Williams: "Her son is uniformly undutiful; so I conclude, like many other sober men, he might once in his life be drunk, and in that fit nature got the better of his pride."'
Johnson's application for the mastership of the Grammar School at Solihull in Warwickshire.
(Vol. i, p. 96.)
Johnson, a few weeks after his marriage, applied for the mastership of Solihull Grammar School, as is shown by the following letter, preserved in the Pembroke College MSS., addressed to Mr. Walmsley, and quoted by Mr. Croker. I failed to insert it in my notes.
'Solihull, the 30 August 1735.
'SIR,
'I was favoured with yours of the 13th inst. in due time, but deferred answering it til now, it takeing up some time to informe the Foeofees of the contents thereof; and before they would return an Answer, desired some time to make enquiry of the caracter of Mr. Johnson, who all agree that he is an excellent scholar, and upon that account deserves much better than to be schoolmaster of Solihull. But then he has the caracter of being a very haughty, ill-natured gent., and that he has such a way of distorting his Face (which though he can't help) the gent, think it may affect some young ladds; for these two reasons he is not approved on, the late master Mr. Crompton's huffing the Foeofees being stil in their memory. However, we are all exstreamly obliged to you for thinking of us, and for proposeing so good a schollar, but more especially is, dear sir,
'Your very humble servant,
'HENRY GRESWOLD.'
Johnson's knowledge of Italian.
(Vol. i, p. 115.)
Boswell says that he does not know 'at what time, or by what means Johnson had acquired a competent knowledge of Italian.' In my note on this I say 'he had read Petrarch "when but a boy."' As Petrarch wrote chiefly in Latin, it is quite possible that Johnson did not acquire his knowledge of Italian so early as I had thought.
Johnson's deference for the general opinion.
(Vol. i, p. 200.)
Miss Burney records an interesting piece of criticism by Johnson. 'There are,' he said, 'three distinct kinds of judges upon all new authors or productions; the first are those who know no rules, but pronounce entirely from their natural taste and feelings; the second are those who know and judge by rules; and the third are those who know, but are above the rules. These last are those you should wish to satisfy. Next to them rate the natural judges; but ever despise those opinions that are formed by the rules.'--Mine. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 180. Later on she writes: --'The natural feelings of untaught hearers ought never to be slighted; and Dr. Johnson has told me the same a thousand times;' ib. ii. 128.
Johnson in the Green Room.
(Vol. i, p. 201.)
Mr. Richard Herne Shepherd, in Watford's Antiquarian for January, 1887, p. 34, asserts that the actual words which Johnson used when he told Garrick that he would no longer frequent his Green Room were indecent; so indecent that Mr. Shepherd can only venture to satisfy those whom he calls students by informing them of them privately. For proof of this charge against the man whose boast it was that 'obscenity had always been repressed in his company' (ante, iv. 295) he brings forward John Wilkes. The story, indeed, as it is told by Boswell, is not too trustworthy, for he had it through Hume from Garrick. As it reaches Mr. Shepherd it comes from Garrick through Wilkes. Garrick, no doubt, as Johnson says (ante, v. 391), was, as a companion, 'restrained by some principle,' and had 'some delicacy of feeling.' Nevertheless, in his stories, he was, we may be sure, no more on oath than a man is in lapidary inscriptions (ante, ii. 407). It is possible that he reported Johnson's very words to Hume, and that Hume did not change them in reporting them to Boswell. Whatever they were, they were spoken in 1749 and published in 1791, when Johnson had been dead six years, Garrick twelve years, and Hume fourteen years. It is idle to dream that they can now be conjecturally emended. But it is worse than idle to bring in as evidence John Wilkes. What entered his ear as purity itself might issue from his mouth as the grossest obscenity. He had no delicacy of feeling. No principle restrained him. When he comes to bear testimony, and aims a shaft at any man's character, the bow that he draws is drawn with the weakness of the hand of a worn-out and shameless profligate.