• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 5680 0

book.’ Why Sir John should suppose that the gentleman alluded to would act in this manner, he has not thought fit to explain. But what he did was not approved of by Johnson; who, upon being acquainted of it without delay by a friend, expressed great indignation, and warmly insisted on the book being delivered up; and, afterwards, in the supposition of his missing it, without knowing by whom it had been taken, he said, ‘Sir, I should have gone out of the world distrusting half mankind.’ Sir John next day wrote a letter to Johnson, assigning reasons for his conduct; upon which Johnson observed to Mr. Langton, ‘Bishop Sanderson could not have dictated a better letter. I could almost say, Melius est sic penituisse quam non erfasse.’1277 The agitation into which Johnson was thrown by this incident, probably made him hastily burn those precious records which must ever be regretted.

a On the same undoubted authority, I give a few articles, which should have been inserted in chronological order; but which, now that they are before me, I should be sorry to omit: –

‘In 1736, Dr. Johnson had a particular inclination to have been engaged as an assistant to the Reverend Mr. Budworth, then head master of the Grammar-school, at Brewood, in Staffordshire, “an excellent person, who possessed every talent of a perfect instructor of youth, in a degree which, (to use the words of one of the brightest ornaments of literature, the Reverend Dr. Hurd, Bishop of Worcester,) has been rarely found in any of that profession since the days of Quintilian.” Mr. Budworth, “who was less known in his life-time, from that obscure situation to which the caprice of fortune oft condemns the most accomplished characters, than his highest merit deserved,” had been bred under Mr. Blackwell,1279 at Market Bosworth, where Johnson was some time an usher; which might naturally lead to the application. Mr. Budworth was certainly no stranger to the learning or abilities of Johnson; as he more than once lamented his having been under the necessity of declining the engagement, from an apprehension that the paralytick affection, under which our great Philologist laboured through life, might become the object of imitation or of ridicule, among his pupils.’ Captain Budworth, his grandson, has confirmed to me this anecdote.

‘Among the early associates of Johnson, at St. John’s Gate, was Samuel Boyse, well known by his ingenious productions; and not less noted for his imprudence. It was not unusual for Boyse to be a customer to the pawnbroker. On one of these occasions, Dr. Johnson collected a sum of money to redeem his friend’s clothes, which in two days after were pawned again. “The sum, (said Johnson,) was collected by sixpences, at a time when to me sixpence was a serious consideration.”

‘Speaking one day of a person for whom he had a real friendship, but in whom vanity was somewhat too predominant, he observed, that “Kelly was so fond of displaying on his sideboard the plate which he possessed, that he added to it his spurs. 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.”’

The late Reverend Mr. Samuel Badcock, 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! Tantüm vidi Virgilium.1280 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∗∗∗∗∗∗∗1281 (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.” I called him an “Index-scholar;” 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