See ante, p. 185.
[719] ‘Lord Southwell,’ said Johnson, ‘was the most qualitied man I ever saw.’ Post, March 23, 1783.
[720] The account given of Levet in Gent. Mag. lv. 101, shews that he was a man out of the common run. He would not otherwise have attracted the notice of the French surgeons. The writer says:—‘Mr. Levet, though an Englishman by birth, became early in life a waiter at a coffee-house in Paris. The surgeons who frequented it, finding him of an inquisitive turn and attentive to their conversation, made a purse for him, and gave him some instructions in their art. They afterwards furnished him with the means of further knowledge, by procuring him free admission to such lectures in pharmacy and anatomy as were read by the ablest professors of that period.’ When he lived with Johnson, ‘much of the day was employed in attendance on his patients, who were chiefly of the lowest rank of tradesmen. The remainder of his hours he dedicated to Hunter’s lectures, and to as many different opportunities of improvement as he could meet with on the same gratuitous conditions.’ ‘All his medical knowledge,’ said Johnson, ‘and it is not inconsiderable, was obtained through the ear. Though he buys books, he seldom looks into them, or discovers any power by which he can be supposed to judge of an author’s merit.’ ‘Dr. Johnson has frequently observed that Levet was indebted to him for nothing more than house-room, his share in a penny-loaf at breakfast, and now and then a dinner on a Sunday. His character was rendered valuable by repeated proof of honesty, tenderness, and gratitude to his benefactor, as well as by an unwearied diligence in his profession. His single failing was an occasional departure from sobriety. Johnson would observe, “he was perhaps the only man who ever became intoxicated through motives of prudence. He reflected that, if he refused the gin or brandy offered him by some of his patients, he could have been no gainer by their cure, as they might have had nothing else to bestow on him. This habit of taking a fee, in whatever shape it was exhibited, could not be put off by advice. He would swallow what he did not like, nay what he knew would injure him, rather than go home with an idea that his skill had been exerted without recompense. Though he took all that was offered him, he demanded nothing from the poor.”’ The writer adds that ‘Johnson never wished him to be regarded as an inferior, or treated him like a dependent.’ Mrs. Piozzi says:—‘When Johnson raised contributions for some distressed author, or wit in want, he often made us all more than amends by diverting descriptions of the lives they were then passing in corners unseen by anybody but himself, and that odd old surgeon whom he kept in his house to tend the outpensioners, and of whom he said most truly and sublimely, that
“In misery’s darkest caverns known,”’ etc. Piozzi’s Anec., p. 118.
‘Levet, madam, is a brutal fellow, but I have a good regard for him; for his brutality is in his manners, not in his mind.’ Mme. D’Arblay’s Diary, i. 115. ‘Whoever called in on Johnson at about midday found him and Levet at breakfast, Johnson, in deshabille, as just risen from bed, and Levet filling out tea for himself and his patron alternately, no conversation passing between them. All that visited him at these hours were welcome. A night’s rest and breakfast seldom failed to refresh and fit him for discourse, and whoever withdrew went too soon.’ Hawkins’s Johnson, p. 435.
How much he valued his poor friend he showed at his death, post, Jan. 20, 1782.
[721]
‘O et praesidium et dulce decus meum.’
‘My joy, my guard, and sweetest good.’
CREECH. Horace, Odes, i. I. 2.
[722] It was in 1738 that Johnson was living in Castle Street. At the time of Reynolds’s arrival in London in 1752 he had been living for some years in Gough Square. Boswell, I suppose, only means to say that Johnson’s acquaintance with the Cotterells was formed when he lived in their neighbourhood. Northcote (Life of Reynolds, i. 69) says that the Cotterells lived ‘opposite to Reynolds’s,’ but his account seems based on a misunderstanding of Boswell.
[723] Ante, p. 165.
[724] ‘We are both of Dr. Johnson’s school,’ wrote Reynolds to some friend. ‘For my own part, I acknowledge the highest obligations to him. He may be said to have formed my mind, and to have brushed from it a great deal of rubbish. Those very persons whom he has brought to think rightly will occasionally criticise the opinions of their master when he nods. But we should always recollect that it is he himself who taught us and enabled us to do it.’ Taylor’s Reynolds, ii. 461. Burke, writing to Malone, said:—‘You state very properly how much Reynolds owed to the writings and conversation of Johnson; and nothing shews more the greatness of Sir Joshua’s parts than his taking advantage of both, and making some application of them to his profession, when Johnson neither understood nor desired to understand anything of painting.’ Ib. p. 638. Reynolds, there can be little question, is thinking of Johnson in the following passage in his Seventh Discourse:—‘What partial and desultory reading cannot afford may be supplied by the conversation of learned and ingenious men, which is the best of all substitutes for those who have not the means or opportunities of deep study. There are many such men in this age: and they will be pleased with communicating their ideas to artists, when they see them curious and docile, if they are treated with that respect and deference which is so justly their due. Into such society young artists, if they make it the point of their ambition, will by degrees be admitted. There, without formal teaching, they will insensibly come to feel and reason like those they live with, and find a rational and systematic taste imperceptibly formed in their minds, which they will know how to reduce to a standard, by applying general truth to their own purposes, better perhaps than those to whom they owned [?owed] the original sentiment.’ Reynolds’s Works, edit. 1824, i. 149. ‘Another thing remarkable to shew how little Sir Joshua crouched to the great is, that he never gave them their proper titles. I never heard the words “your lordship” or “your ladyship” come from his mouth; nor did he ever say “Sir” in speaking to any one but Dr. Johnson; and when he did not hear distinctly what the latter said (which often happened) he would then say “Sir?” that he might repeat it.’ Northcote’s Conversations, p. 289. Gibbon called Johnson ‘Reynolds’s oracle.’ Gibbon’s Misc. Works, i. 149. See also post, under Dec. 29, 1778.
[725] The thought may have been suggested to Reynolds by Johnson’s writings. In The Rambler, No. 87, he had said:—‘There are minds so impatient of inferiority, that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.’ In No. 166, he says:—‘To be obliged is to be in some respect inferior to another.’
[726] Northcote tells the following story on the authority of Miss Reynolds. It is to be noticed, however, that in her Recollections (Croker’s Boswell, p. 832) the story is told somewhat differently. Johnson, Reynolds and Miss Reynolds one day called on the Miss Cotterells. ‘Johnson was the last of the three that came in; when the maid, seeing this uncouth and dirty figure of a man, and not conceiving he could be one of the company, laid hold of his coat, just as he was going up-stairs, and pulled him back again, saying, “You fellow, what is your business here? I suppose you intended to rob the house.” This most unlucky accident threw him into such a fit of shame and anger that he roared out like a bull, “What have I done? What have I done?”’ Northcote’s Reynolds, i. 73.
[727] Johnson writing to Langton on January 9, 1759, describes him as ‘towering in the confidence of twenty-one.’ The conclusion of The Rambler was in March 1752, when Langton must have been only fourteen or just fifteen at most; Johnson’s first letter to him dated May 6, 1755, shews that at that time their acquaintance had been but short. Langton’s subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles in the Register of the University of Oxford was on July 7, 1757. Johnson’s first letter to him at Oxford is dated June 28, 1757.
[728] See post, March 20, 1782.
[729] ‘My friend Maltby and I,’ said Samuel Rogers, ‘when we were very young men, had a strong desire to see Dr. Johnson; and we determined to call upon him, and introduce ourselves. We