dated July 3, 1751, from one Mitchell, a tradesman in Chandos-street, pressing Johnson to pay £2, due by his wife ever since August, 1749, and threatening legal proceedings to enforce payment. This letter Mr. Boswell had endorsed, ‘Proof of Dr. Johnson’s wretched circumstances in 1751.’ CROKER.
[699] In the Gent. Mag. for February, 1794, (p. 100,) was printed a letter pretending to be that written by Johnson on the death of his wife. But it is merely a transcript of the 41st number of The Idler. A fictitious date (March 17, 1751, O. S.) was added by some person previous to this paper being sent to the publisher of that miscellany, to give a colour to this deception. MALONE.
[700] Francis Barber was born in Jamaica, and was brought to England in 1750 by Colonel Bathurst, father of Johnson’s very intimate friend, Dr. Bathurst. He was sent, for some time, to the Reverend Mr. Jackson’s school, at Barton, in Yorkshire. The Colonel by his will left him his freedom, and Dr. Bathurst was willing that he should enter into Johnson’s service, in which he continued from 1752 till Johnson’s death, with the exception of two intervals; in one of which, upon some difference with his master, he went and served an apothecary in Cheapside, but still visited Dr. Johnson occasionally; in another, he took a fancy to go to sea. Part of the time, indeed, he was, by the kindness of his master, at a school in Northamptonshire, that he might have the advantage of some learning. So early and so lasting a connection was there between Dr. Johnson and this humble friend. BOSWELL. ‘I believe that Francis was scarcely as much the object of Mr. Johnson’s personal kindness as the representative of Dr. Bathurst, for whose sake he would have loved anybody or anything.’ Piozzi’s Anec. p. 212.
[701] ‘I asked him,’ writes Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. pp. 146-150), ‘if he ever disputed with his wife. “Perpetually,” said he; “my wife had a particular reverence for cleanliness, and desired the praise of neatness in her dress and furniture, as many ladies do, till they become troublesome to their best friends, slaves to their own besoms, and only sigh for the hour of sweeping their husbands out of the house as dirt and useless lumber. A clean floor is so comfortable, she would say sometimes by way of twitting; till at last I told her that I thought we had had talk enough about the floor, we would now have a touch at the ceiling.” I asked him if he ever huffed his wife about his dinner. “So often,” replied he, “that at last she called to me and said, Nay, hold, Mr. Johnson, and do not make a farce of thanking God for a dinner which in a few minutes you will protest not eatable.”’
[702] ‘When a friend is carried to his grave, we at once find excuses for every weakness, and palliations of every fault; we recollect a thousand endearments, which before glided off our minds without impression, a thousand favours unrepaid, a thousand duties unperformed; and wish, vainly wish, for his return, not so much that we may receive, as that we may bestow happiness, and recompense that kindness which before we never understood.’ Rambler, No. 54.
[703] Pr. and Med. p. 19. BOSWELL.
[704] Hawkins’s Life of Johnson, p. 316. BOSWELL.
[705] See post, Oct. 26, 1769, where the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory or ‘a middle state,’ as Johnson calls it is discussed, and Boswell’s Hebrides, Oct. 25, 1773.
[706] In the original, ‘lawful for me.’ Much the same prayer Johnson made for his mother. Pr. and Med. p. 38. On Easter Day, 1764, he records:—‘After sermon I recommended Tetty in a prayer by herself; and my father, mother, brother, and Bathurst in another. I did it only once, so far as it might be lawful for me.’ Ib. p. 54. On the death of Mr. Thrale he wrote, ‘May God that delighteth in mercy have had mercy on thee.’ Ib. p. 191; and later on, ‘for Henry Thrale, so far as is lawful, I humbly implore thy mercy in his present state.’ Ib. p. 197.
[707] Pr. and Med., p. 20. BOSWELL.
[708] Shortly before his death (see post, July 12, 1784) Johnson had a stone placed over her grave with the following inscription:—
Hic conduntur reliquiae
ELIZABETHÆ
Antiqua Jarvisiorum Leicestrienses, ortae;
Formosae, cultae, ingeniosae, piae;
Uxoris, primis nuptiis, Henrici Porter,
Secundis Samuelis Johnson:
Qui multum amatam, diuque defletam
Hoc lapide contexit.
Obiit Londini Mense Mart.
A.D. MDCCLIII
As Mrs. Johnson died in 1752, the date is wrong.
[709] See post, Sept. 21. 1777.
[710] He described her as a woman ‘whom none, who were capable of distinguishing either moral or intellectual excellence, could know without esteem or tenderness. She was extensively charitable in her judgements and opinions, grateful for every kindness that she received, and willing to impart assistance of every kind to all whom her little power enabled her to benefit. She passed through many months of languor, weakness, and decay without a single murmur of impatience, and often expressed her adoration of that mercy which granted her so long time for recollection and penitence.’ Johnson’s Works, ix. 523.
[711] See ante, p. 187.
[712] Dr. Bathurst, though a Physician of no inconsiderable merit, had not the good fortune to get much practice in London. He was, therefore willing to accept of employment abroad, and, to the regret of all who knew him, fell a sacrifice to the destructive climate, in the expedition against the Havannah. Mr. Langton recollects the following passage in a letter from Dr. Johnson to Mr. Beauclerk: ‘The Havannah is taken;—a conquest too dearly obtained; for, Bathurst died before it. “Vix Priamus tanti totaque Troja fuit.”’ BOSWELL.
The quotation is from Ovid, Heroides, i. 4. Johnson (post, Dec. 21, 1762) wrote to Baretti, ‘Bathurst went physician to the army, and died at the Havannah.’ Mr. Harwood in his History of Lichfield, p. 451, gives two letters from Bathurst to Johnson dated 1757. In the postscript to one he says:—‘I know you will call me a lazy dog, and in truth I deserve it; but I am afraid I shall never mend. I have indeed long known that I can love my friends without being able to tell them so…. Adieu my dearest friend.’ He calls Johnson ‘the best of friends, to whom I stand indebted for all the little virtue and knowledge that I have.’ ‘Nothing,’ he continues, ‘I think, but absolute want can force me to continue where I am.’ Jamaica he calls ‘this execrable region.’ Hawkins (Life, p. 235) says that ‘Bathurst, before leaving England, confessed to Johnson that in the course of ten years’ exercise of his faculty he had never opened his hand to more than one guinea.’ Johnson perhaps had Bathurst in mind when, many years later, he wrote:—‘A physician in a great city seems to be the mere plaything of fortune; his degree of reputation is for the most part totally casual; they that employ him know not his excellence; they that reject him know not his deficience. By any acute observer, who had looked on the transactions of the medical world for half a century, a very curious book might be written on the Fortune of Physicians.’ Works, viii. 471.
[713] Mr. Ryland was one of the members of the old club in Ivy Lane who met to dine in 1783. Mr. Payne was another, (post, end of 1783).
[714] Johnson revised her volumes: post, under Nov. 19, 1783.
[715] Catherine Sawbridge, sister of Mrs. [? Mr.] Alderman Sawbridge, was born in 1733; but it was not till 1760 that she was married to Dr. Macaulay, a physician; so that Barber’s account was incorrect either in date or name. CROKER. For Alderman Sawbridge see post, May 17, 1778, note.
[716] See post, under Nov. 19, 1783. Johnson bequeathed to her a book to keep as a token of remembrance (post, Dec. 9, 1784). I find her name in the year 1765 in the list of subscribers to the edition of Swift’s Works, in 17 vols., so that perhaps she was more ‘in the learned way’ than Barber thought.
[717] Reynolds did not return to England from Italy till the October of this year, seven months after Mrs. Johnson’s