Part 3 (1/2)

”Three poets in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn; The first in loftiness of thought surpa.s.sed, The next in majesty; in both the last.

The force of Nature could no further go, To make a third she joined the former two.”

One evening in the oratorio season of the year 1771 Mr. Johnson went with me to Covent Garden Theatre, and though he was for the most part an exceedingly bad playhouse companion, as his person drew people's eyes upon the box, and the loudness of his voice made it difficult for me to hear anybody but himself, he sat surprisingly quiet, and I flattered myself that he was listening to the music. When we were got home, however, he repeated these verses, which he said he had made at the oratorio, and he bade me translate them:

IN THEATRO.

”Tertii verso quater orbe l.u.s.tri Quid theatrales tibi crispe pompae!

Quam decet canos male literatos Sera voluptas!

”Tene mulceri fidibus canoris?

Tene cantorum modulis stupere?

Tene per pictas oculo elegante Currere formas?

”Inter equales sine felle liber, Codices veri studiosus inter Rectius vives, sua quisque carpat Gaudia gratus.

”Lusibus gaudet puer otiosis Luxus oblectat juvenem theatri, At seni fluxo sapienter uti Tempore restat.”

I gave him the following lines in imitation, which he liked well enough, I think:

”When threescore years have chilled thee quite, Still can theatric scenes delight?

Ill suits this place with learned wight, May Bates or Coulson cry.

”The scholar's pride can Brent disarm?

His heart can soft Guadagni warm?

Or scenes with sweet delusion charm The climacteric eye?

”The social club, the lonely tower, Far better suit thy midnight hour; Let each according to his power In worth or wisdom s.h.i.+ne!

”And while play pleases idle boys, And wanton mirth fond youth employs, To fix the soul, and free from toys, That useful task be thine.”

The copy of verses in Latin hexameters, as well as I remember, which he wrote to Dr. Lawrence, I forgot to keep a copy of; and he obliged me to resign his translation of the song beginning, ”Busy, curious, thirsty fly,” for him to give Mr. Langton, with a promise _not_ to retain a copy.

I concluded he knew why, so never inquired the reason. He had the greatest possible value for Mr. Langton, of Langton Hall, Lincoln, of whose virtue and learning he delighted to talk in very exalted terms; and poor Dr. Lawrence had long been his friend and confident. The conversation I saw them hold together in Ess.e.x Street one day, in the year 1781 or 1782, was a melancholy one, and made a singular impression on my mind. He was himself exceedingly ill, and I accompanied him thither for advice. The physician was, however, in some respects more to be pitied than the patient. Johnson was panting under an asthma and dropsy, but Lawrence had been brought home that very morning struck with the palsy, from which he had, two hours before we came, strove to awaken himself by blisters. They were both deaf, and scarce able to speak besides: one from difficulty of breathing, the other from paralytic debility. To give and receive medical counsel, therefore, they fairly sat down on each side a table in the doctor's gloomy apartment, adorned with skeletons, preserved monsters, etc., and agreed to write Latin billets to each other. Such a scene did I never see. ”You,” said Johnson, ”are timide and gelide,” finding that his friend had prescribed palliative, not drastic, remedies. ”It is not _me_,” replies poor Lawrence, in an interrupted voice, ”'tis nature that is gelide and timide.” In fact, he lived but few months after, I believe, and retained his faculties still a shorter time. He was a man of strict piety and profound learning, but little skilled in the knowledge of life or manners, and died without having ever enjoyed the reputation he so justly deserved.

Mr. Johnson's health had been always extremely bad since I first knew him, and his over-anxious care to retain without blemish the perfect sanity of his mind contributed much to disturb it. He had studied medicine diligently in all its branches, but had given particular attention to the diseases of the imagination, which he watched in himself with a solicitude destructive of his own peace, and intolerable to those he trusted. Dr. Lawrence told him one day that if he would come and beat him once a week he would bear it, but to hear his complaints was more than _man_ could support. 'Twas therefore that he tried, I suppose, and in eighteen years contrived to weary the patience of a _woman_. When Mr.

Johnson felt his fancy, or fancied he felt it, disordered, his constant recurrence was to the study of arithmetic, and one day that he was totally confined to his chamber, and I inquired what he had been doing to divert himself, he showed me a calculation which I could scarce be made to understand, so vast was the plan of it, and so very intricate were the figures: no other, indeed, than that the national debt, computing it at one hundred and eighty millions sterling, would, if converted into silver, serve to make a meridian of that metal, I forgot how broad, for the globe of the whole earth, the real _globe_. On a similar occasion I asked him, knowing what subject he would like best to talk upon, how his opinion stood towards the question between Paschal and Soame Jennings about number and numeration? as the French philosopher observes that infinity, though on all sides astonis.h.i.+ng, appears most so when the idea is connected with the idea of number; for the notion of infinite number--and infinite number we know there is--stretches one's capacity still more than the idea of infinite s.p.a.ce. ”Such a notion, indeed,”

adds he, ”can scarcely find room in the human mind.” Our English author, on the other hand, exclaims, let no man give himself leave to talk about infinite number, for infinite number is a contradiction in terms; whatever is once numbered, we all see, cannot be infinite. ”I think,”

said Mr. Johnson, after a pause, ”we must settle the matter thus: numeration is certainly infinite, for eternity might be employed in adding unit to unit; but every number is in itself finite, as the possibility of doubling it easily proves; besides, stop at what point you will, you find yourself as far from infinitude as ever.” These pa.s.sages I wrote down as soon as I had heard them, and repent that I did not take the same method with a dissertation he made one other day that he was very ill, concerning the peculiar properties of the number sixteen, which I afterwards tried, but in vain, to make him repeat.

As ethics or figures, or metaphysical reasoning, was the sort of talk he most delighted in, so no kind of conversation pleased him less, I think, than when the subject was historical fact or general polity. ”What shall we learn from _that_ stuff?” said he. ”Let us not fancy, like Swift, that we are exalting a woman's character by telling how she

”'Could name the ancient heroes round, Explain for what they were renowned,' etc.”

I must not, however, lead my readers to suppose that he meant to reserve such talk for men's company as a proof of pre-eminence. ”He never,” as he expressed it, ”desired to hear of the Punic War while he lived; such conversation was lost time,” he said, ”and carried one away from common life, leaving no ideas behind which could serve _living wight_ as warning or direction.”

”How I should act is not the case, But how would Brutus in my place.”

”And now,” cries Mr. Johnson, laughing with obstreperous violence, ”if these two foolish lines can be equalled in folly, except by the two succeeding ones--show them me.”

I asked him once concerning the conversation powers of a gentleman with whom I was myself unacquainted. ”He talked to me at club one day,”

replies our Doctor, ”concerning Catiline's conspiracy, so I withdrew my attention, and thought about Tom Thumb.”