Aug. 1783), ‘valuable qualities.’ ‘Had she had,’ wrote Johnson, ‘good humour and prompt elocution, her universal curiosity and comprehensive knowledge would have made her the delight of all that knew her’ (Piozzi Letters, ii. 311). To Langton he wrote:—‘I have lost a companion to whom I have had recourse for domestic amusement for thirty years, and whose variety of knowledge never was exhausted’ (post, Sept. 29, 1783). ‘Her acquisitions,’ he wrote to Dr. Burney, ‘were many and her curiosity universal; so that she partook of every conversation’ (post, Sept. 1783). Murphy (Life p. 72) says:—‘She possessed uncommon talents, and, though blind, had an alacrity of mind that made her conversation agreeable, and even desirable.’ According to Hawkins (Life, 322-4) ‘she had acquired a knowledge of French and Italian, and had made great improvements in literature. She was a woman of an enlightened understanding. Johnson in many exigencies found her an able counsellor, and seldom shewed his wisdom more than when he hearkened to her advice.’ Perhaps Johnson had her in his thoughts when, writing of Pope’s last years and Martha Blount, he said:—‘Their acquaintance began early; the life of each was pictured on the other’s mind; their conversation therefore was endearing, for when they met there was an immediate coalition of congenial notions.’ (Johnson’s Works, viii. 304.) Miss Mulso (Mrs. Chapone) writing to Mrs. Carter in 1753, says:—‘I was charmed with Mr. Johnson’s behaviour to Mrs. Williams, which was like that of a fond father to his daughter. She shewed very good sense, with a great deal of modesty and humility; and so much patience and cheerfulness under her misfortune that it doubled my concern for her’ (Mrs. Chapone’s Life, p. 73). Miss Talbot wrote to Mrs. Carter in 1756:—‘My mother the other day fell in love with your friend, Mrs. Williams, whom we met at Mr. Richardson’s [where Miss Mulso also had met her], and is particularly charmed with the sweetness of her voice’ (Talbot and Carter Corresp. ii. 221). Miss Talbot was a niece of Lord Chancellor Talbot. Hannah More wrote in 1774:—‘Mrs. Williams is engaging in her manners; her conversation lively and entertaining’ (More’s Memoirs, i.49). Boswell, however, more than once complains that she was ‘peevish’ (post, Oct. 26, 1769 and April 7, 1776). At a time when she was very ill, and had gone into the country to try if she could improve her health, Johnson wrote:—‘Age, and sickness, and pride have made her so peevish, that I was forced to bribe the maid to stay with her by a secret stipulation of half-a-crown a week over her wages’ (post, July 22, 1777). Malone, in a note on August 2, 1763, says that he thinks she had of her own ‘about £35 or £40 a year.’ This was in her latter days; Johnson had prevailed on Garrick to give her a benefit and Mrs. Montagu to give her a pension. She used, he adds, to help in the house-work.
[685] March 14. See ante, p. 203, note 1. He had grown weary of his work. In the last Rambler but one he wrote: ‘When once our labour has begun, the comfort that enables us to endure it is the prospect of its end…. He that is himself weary will soon weary the public. Let him therefore lay down his employment, whatever it be, who can no longer exert his former activity or attention; let him not endeavour to struggle with censure, or obstinately infest the stage, till a general hiss commands him to depart.’
[686] How successful an imitator Hawkesworth was is shewn by the following passage in the Carter and Talbot Corresp., ii. 109:—‘I discern Mr. Johnson through all the papers that are not marked A, as evidently as if I saw him through the keyhole with the pen in his hand.’
[687] In the Rambler for Feb. 25 of this year (No. 203) he wrote in the following melancholy strain:—‘Every period of life is obliged to borrow its happiness from the time to come. In youth we have nothing past to entertain us, and in age we derive little from retrospect but hopeless sorrow. Yet the future likewise has its limits which the imagination dreads to approach, but which we see to be not far distant. The loss of our friends and companions impresses hourly upon us the necessity of our own departure; we know that the schemes of man are quickly at an end, that we must soon lie down in the grave with the forgotten multitudes of former ages, and yield our place to others, who, like us, shall be driven a while by hope or fear about the surface of the earth, and then like us be lost in the shades of death.’ In Prayers and Meditations, pp. 12-15, in a service that he used on May 6, ‘as preparatory to my return to life to-morrow,’ he prays:—‘Enable me to begin and perfect that reformation which I promised her, and to persevere in that resolution which she implored Thee to continue, in the purposes which I recorded in Thy sight when she lay dead before me.’ See post, Jan. 20, 1780. The author of Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Dr. Johnson, 1785, says, p. 113, that on the death of his wife, ‘to walk the streets of London was for many a lonesome night Johnson’s constant substitute for sleep.’
[688] ‘I have often been inclined to think that, if this fondness of Johnson for his wife was not dissembled, it was a lesson that he had learned by rote, and that, when he practised it, he knew not where to stop till he became ridiculous.’ Hawkins’s Johnson, p. 313
[689] The son of William Strahan, M.P., ‘Johnson’s old and constant friend, Printer to His Majesty’ (post, under April 20, 1781). He attended Johnson on his death-bed, and published the volume called Prayers and Meditations.
[690] Southey in his Life of Wesley, i. 359, writes:—‘The universal attention which has been paid to dreams in all ages proves that the superstition is natural; and I have heard too many well-attested facts (facts to which belief could not be refused upon any known laws of evidence) not to believe that impressions are sometimes made in this manner, and forewarnings communicated, which cannot be explained by material philosophy or mere metaphysics.’
[691] Warburton in his Divine Legation, i. 284, quotes the ‘famous sepulchral inscription of the Roman widow.’ ‘Ita peto vos Manes sanctissimi commendatum habeatis meum conjugem et velitis huic indulgentissimi esse horis nocturnis ut eum videam,’ etc.
[692] Mrs. Boswell died in June 1789. Johnson’s prayer with Boswell’s comments on it was first inserted in the Additions to the second edition.
[693] Mrs. Johnson died on March 17, O. S., or March 28, N. S. The change of style was made in September, 1752. He might have kept either the 17th, or the 28th as the anniversary. In like manner, though he was born on Sept. 7, after the change he kept the 18th as his birth-day. See post, beginning of 1753, where he writes, ‘Jan. 1, N. S., which I shall use for the future.’
[694] In Prayers and Meditations, p. 22, he recorded: ‘The melancholy of this day hung long upon me.’ P. 53: ‘April 22, 1764, Thought on Tetty, dear, poor Tetty, with my eyes full.’ P. 91: ‘March 28, 1770. This is the day on which, in 1752, I was deprived of poor, dear Tetty…. When I recollect the time in which we lived together, my grief for her departure is not abated; and I have less pleasure in any good that befalls me because she does not partake it.’ P. 170: ‘April 20, 1778. Poor Tetty, whatever were our faults and failings, we loved each other. I did not forget thee yesterday [Easter Sunday]. Couldest thou have lived!’ P. 210: ‘March 28, 1782. This is the day on which, in 1752, dear Tetty died. I have now uttered a prayer of repentance and contrition; perhaps Tetty knows that I prayed for her. Perhaps Tetty is now praying for me. God help me.’ In a letter to Mrs. Thrale on the occasion of the death of her son (dated March 30, 1776) he thus refers to the loss of his wife:—‘I know that a whole system of hopes, and designs, and expectations is swept away at once, and nothing left but bottomless vacuity. What you feel I have felt, and hope that your disquiet will be shorter than mine.’ Piozzi Letters, i. 310. In a letter to Mr. Elphinston, who had just lost his wife, written on July 27, 1778, he repeats the same thought:—‘A loss such as yours lacerates the mind, and breaks the whole system of purposes and hopes. It leaves a dismal vacuity in life, which affords nothing on which the affections can fix, or to which endeavour may be directed. All this I have known.’ Croker’s Boswell, p. 66, note. See also post, his letter to Mr. Warton of Dec. 21, 1754, and to Dr. Lawrence of Jan. 20, 1780.
[695] In the usual monthly list of deaths in the Gent. Mag. her name is not given. Johnson did not, I suppose, rank among ‘eminent persons.’
[696] Irene, Act i. sc. 1.
[697]