RESIDENCES OF JOHNSON

an action sufficient to redeem a million of the asperities of temper occasioned by disease, and to stamp him, in spite of his bigotry, a good Christian. Here, at all events, he walked and talked, and shouldered wondering porters out of the way, and mourned, and philosophised, and was "a good-natured fellow" (as he called himself), and roared with peals of laughter till midnight echoed to his roar.

"We walked in the evening," says Boswell, "in Greenwich Park. He asked me, I suppose by way of trying my disposition, 'Is not this very fine?' Having no exquisite relish of the beauties of nature, and being more delighted with the busy hum of men, I answered, 'Yes, sir; but not equal to Fleet Street.' Johnson. 'You are right, sir. " 1

Boswell vindicates the taste here expressed by the example of a "very fashionable baronet," who, on his attention being called to the fragrance of a May evening in the country, observed, "This may be very well, but I prefer the smell of a flambeau at the playhouse." The baronet here alluded to was Sir Michael le Fleming, who, by way of comment on his indifference to fresh air, died of an apoplectic fit while conversing with Lord Howick (the late Earl Grey), at the Admiralty.2 However, Johnson's ipse dixit was enough. He wanted neither Boswell's vindication, nor any other. He was melancholy, and glad to be taken from his thoughts; and London furnished him with an endless flow of society.

Johnson's abodes in Fleet Street were in the following order :-First, in Fetter Lane, then in Boswell Court, then in Gough Square, in the Inner Temple Lane, in Johnson's Court, and finally, for the longest period, in Bolt Court, where he died. His mode of life, during a considerable portion of his residence in these places, is described in a communication to Boswell by the Rev. Dr

1 Boswell, ut supra, vol. i., p. 441.
2 Malone, on the passage in Boswell, ibid.

the

ANECDOTE OF JOHNSON

Maxwell, assistant preacher at the Temple, who was intimate with Johnson for many years, and who spoke of his memory with affection.

"About twelve o'clock," says the doctor, "I commonly visited him, and found him in bed, or declaiming over his tea, which he drank very plentifully. He generally had a levee of morning visitors, chiefly men of letters; Hawkesworth, Goldsmith, Murphy, Langton, Steevens, Beauclerk, &c., &c., and sometimes learned ladies; particularly, I remember, a French lady of wit and fashion doing him the honour of a visit. He seemed to me to be considered as a kind of public oracle, whom everybody thought they had a right to visit and consult; and, doubtless, they were well rewarded. I never could discover how he found time for his compositions. declaimed all the morning, then went to dinner at a tavern, where he commonly staid late, and then drank his tea at some friend's house, over which he loitered a great while, but seldom took supper. I fancy he must have read and wrote chiefly in the night; for I can scarcely recollect that he ever refused going with me to a tavern, and he often went to Ranelagh, which he deemed a place of innocent recreation.

He

"He frequently gave all the silver in his pocket to the poor, who watched him between his house and the tavern where he dined. He walked the streets at all hours, and said he was never robbed, for the rogues knew he had little money, nor had the appearance of having much.

"Though the most accessible and communicative man alive, yet when he suspected that he was invited to be exhibited, he constantly spurned the invitation.

"Two young women from Staffordshire visited him when I was present, to consult him on the subject of Methodism, to which they were inclined. 'Come' (said he), 'you pretty fools, dine with Maxwell and me at the Mitre, and we will talk over that subject'; which they

JOHNSON AND HIS ASSOCIATES

did; and after dinner he took one of them on his knees, and fondled them for half an hour together." 1

This anecdote is exquisite. It shows, that, however impatient he was of having his own superstitions canvassed, he was loth to see them inflicted on others. He is here a harmless Falstaff, with two innocent damsels on his knees, in lieu of Mesdames Ford and Page.

In Gough Square, Johnson wrote part of his Dictionary. He had written The Rambler and taken his high stand with the public before. "At this time," says Barber; his servant, "he had little for himself, but frequently sent money to Mr Shiels when in distress." (Shiels was one of his amanuenses in the dictionary.) His friends and visitors in Gough Square are a good specimen of what they always were-a miscellany creditable to the largeness of his humanity. There was Cave, Dr Hawkesworth, Miss Carter, Mrs Macauley (two ladies who must have looked strangely at one another), Mr (afterwards Sir Joshua) Reynolds, Langton, Mrs Williams (a poor poetess whom he maintained in his house), Mr Levett (an apothecary on the same footing), Garrick, Lord Orrery, Lord Southwell, and Mrs Gardiner, wife of a tallow chandler on Snow-hill-"not in the learned way," said Mr Barber, "but a worthy good woman." With all his respect for rank, which doubtless he regarded as a special dispensation of Providence, his friend Beauclerk's notwithstanding, Johnson never lost sight of the dignity of goodness. He did not, however, confine his attentions to those who were noble or amiable; though we are to suppose, that everybody with whom he chose to be conversant had some good quality or other; unless, indeed, he patronised them as the Duke of Montague did his ugly dogs, because nobody would if he did not. The great

JOHNSON AND HIS FAMILY

secret, no doubt, was, that he was glad of the company of any of his fellow-creatures who would bear and forbear with him, and for whose tempers he did not care as much as he did for their welfare. And he was giving alms; which was a catholic part of religion, in the proper sense of the word.

"He nursed," says Mrs Thrale, in her superfluous style, "whole nests of people in his house, when the lame, the blind, the sick, and the sorrowful found a sure retreat from all the evils whence his little income could secure them; and commonly spending the middle of the week at our house, he kept his numerous family in Fleet Street upon a settled allowance; but returned to them every Saturday to give them three good dinners and his company, before he came back to us on the Monday night, treating them with the same, or perhaps more, ceremonious civility, than he would have done by as many people of fashion, making the Holy Scripture thus the rule of his conduct, and only expecting salvation as he was able to obey its precepts." 1

Johnson's female inmates were not like the romantic ones of Richardson.

"We surely cannot but admire," says Boswell, "the benevolent exertions of this great and good man, especially when we consider how grievously he was afflicted with bad health, and how uncomfortable his home was made by the perpetual jarring of those whom he charitably accommodated under his roof. He has sometimes suffered me to talk jocularly of his group of females, and call them his seraglio. He thus mentions them, together with honest Levett, in one of his letters to Mrs Thrale : 'Williams hates everybody; Levett hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams; Desmoulins hates them both; Poll loves none of them." 2

JOHNSON'S RESIDENCES

Of his residence in Inner Temple Lane we have spoken before. He lived there six or seven years, and then re

moved to Johnson's Court, No. 7, where he resided for ten. Johnson's Court is in the neighbourhood of Gough Square. It was during this period that he accompanied his friend