goose; one smells it so while it is roasting, said I: But you, Madam (replies the Doctor), have been at all times a fortunate woman, having always had your hunger so forestalled by indulgence, that you never experienced the delight of smelling your dinner beforehand.' Which pleasure, answered I pertly, is to be enjoyed in perfection by such as have the happiness to pass through Porridge-Island of a morning. Come, come (says he gravely), let's have no sneering at what is so serious to so many: hundreds of your fellow-creatures, dear Lady, turn another way, that they may not be tempted by the luxuries of Porridge-Island to wish for gratifications they are not able to obtain: you are certainly not better than all of them; give God thanks that you are happier.' I received on another occasion as just a rebuke from Mr. Johnson, for an offence of the same nature, and hope I took care never to provoke a third; for after a very long summer particularly hot and dry, I was wishing naturally but thoughtlessly for some rain to lay the dust as we drove along the Surry roads. symptom of radical health, I have a voracious delight in raw summer fruit, of which I was less eager a few years ago.' Life, iv. 353. I Porridge-Island is a mean street in London, filled with cook-shops for the convenience of the poorer inhabitants; the real name of it I know not, but suspect that it is generally known by, to have been originally a term of derision. Note by Mrs. Piozzi. 'The fine gentleman whose lodgings no one is acquainted with; whose dinner is served up under cover of a pewter plate from the cook's shop in Porridge Island, and whose annuity of a hundred pounds is made to supply a laced suit every year, and a chair every evening to a rout, returns to his bedroom on foot, and goes shivering and supperless to bed, for the pleasure of appearing among people of equal importance with the Quality of Brentford.' The World, Charles Knight, describing a walk in 1812 from Covent Garden to Pimlico, says :-'We make our way to Charing Cross, deviating a little from the usual route, that I may see how some of the worthy electors of Westminster are lodged and fed. We are in the alleys known in the time of Ben Jonson as the Bermudas but since called the Caribbee Islands... Close at hand is Porridge Island, then famous for cook-shops, as in the middle of the previous century. . . We are out of the labyrinth, and are in a neglected open space, on the north of which stands the King's Mews. Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery have swept away these relics of the pride of the Crown and the low estate of the people.' Passages of a Working Life, i. 117. 'I cannot 'I cannot bear (replied he, with much asperity and an altered look), when I know how many poor families will perish next winter for want of that bread which the present drought will deny them, to hear ladies sighing for rain, only that their complexions may not suffer from the heat, or their clothes be incommoded by the dust ;-for shame! leave off such foppish lamentations, and study to relieve those whose distresses are real.' With advising others to be charitable however, Dr. Johnson did not content himself. He gave away all he had, and all he ever had gotten, except the two thousand pounds he left behind'; and the very small portion of his income which he spent on himself, with all our calculation, we never could make more than seventy, or at most fourscore pounds a year, and he pretended to allow himself a hundred. He had numberless dependents out of doors as well as in, who, as he expressed it, did not like to see him latterly unless he brought 'em money.' For those people he used frequently to raise contributions on his richer friends'; 'and this (says he) is one of the thousand reasons which ought to restrain a man from drony 3 solitude and useless retirement. Solitude (added he one day) is dangerous to reason, without being favourable to virtue: pleasures of some sort are necessary to the intellectual as to the corporeal health; and those who resist gaiety, will be likely for the most part to fall a sacrifice to appetite; for the solicitations of sense are always at hand, and a dram to a vacant and solitary person is a speedy and seducing relief. Remember (continued he) that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad: the mind stagnates for want of employment, grows morbid, and is extinguished like a candle in foul air '' The amount of his property proved to be considerably more than he had supposed it to be.' Life, iv. 404. 2 As for instance he wrote to Reynolds in June, 1784 :-'I am ashamed to ask for some relief for a poor man, to whom, I hope, I have given what I can be expected to spare. The man importunes me, and the blow goes round.' Ib. iv. 283. 3 Dronish is in Johnson's Dictionary but not drony. • 'Solitude to Johnson,' wrote Reynolds, was horror; nor would he ever trust himself alone but when It was on this principle that Johnson encouraged parents to carry their daughters early and much into company: 'for what harm can be done before so many witnesses? Solitude is the surest nurse of all prurient passions, and a girl in the hurry of preparation, or tumult of gaiety, has neither inclination nor leisure to let tender expressions soften or sink into her heart. The ball, the show, are not the dangerous places: no, 'tis the private friend, the kind consoler, the companion of the easy vacant hour, whose compliance with her opinions can flatter her vanity, and whose conversation can just sooth, without ever stretching her mind, that is the lover to be feared he who buzzes in her ear at court, or at the opera, must be contented to buzz in vain.' These notions Dr. Johnson carried so very far, that I have heard him say, 'if you would shut up any man with any woman, so as to make them derive their whole pleasure from each other, they would inevitably fall in love, as it is called, with each other; but at six months' end if you would throw them both into public life where they might change partners at pleasure, each would soon forget that fondness which mutual dependance, and the paucity of general amusement alone, had caused, and each would separately feel delighted by their release.' In these opinions Rousseau apparently concurs with him. exactly; and Mr. Whitehead's poem called Variety, is written solely to elucidate this simple proposition. Prior likewise advises the husband to send his wife abroad, and let her see the world as it really stands Powder, and pocket-glass, and beau3. employed in writing or reading.' Life, i. 144, n. 2. See also ib. iii. 27, 415. 1 To Sir Adam Fergusson, 'who expressed some apprehension that the Pantheon would encourage luxury, "Sir (said Johnson), I am a great friend to public amusements, for they keep people from vice."' Ib. ii. 169. 'But whatever be the incentives to vice which are found at the theatre, public pleasures are generally less guilty than solitary ones.' Goldsmith's Present State of Polite Learning, ch. xii. This poem by William Whitehead is given in Campbell's British Poets, ed. 1845, p. 585. 3 'Dear angry friend, what must be done? Is there no way? there is but one; Mr. Mr. Johnson was indeed unjustly supposed to be a lover of singularity. Few people had a more settled reverence for the world than he, or was less captivated by new modes of behaviour introduced, or innovations on the long-received customs of common life. He hated the way of leaving a company without taking notice to the lady of the house that he was going; and did not much like any of the contrivances by which ease has been lately introduced into society instead of ceremony, which had more of his approbation. Cards, dress3, and dancing however, all found their advocates in Dr. Johnson, who inculcated, upon principle, the cultivation of those arts, which many a moralist thinks himself bound to reject, and many a Christian holds unfit to be practised. No person (said he one day) goes under-dressed till he thinks himself of consequence enough to forbear carrying the badge of his rank upon his back. And in Send her abroad, and let her see Being forbidden, longs to know, ' See Life, ii. 75 for instances of Johnson's censure of singularity. In the Tatler, No. 103, it is thus attacked :- The bearing to be laughed at for singularities teaches us insensibly an impertinent fortitude, and enables us to bear public censure for things which more substantially deserve it.' Miss Byron says of Sir Charles Grandison's dress :- He scruples not to modernize a little; but then you see that it is in compliance with the fashion, and to avoid singularity; a fault to which great minds are perhaps too often subject, tho' he is so much above it.' Sir C. Grandison, i. 324. 'Singularity is only pardonable in old age and retirement; I may now be as singular as I please, but you may not.' Chesterfield's Letters to his Son, iv. 78. 2 'He said, "I am sorry I have not learnt to play at cards. It is very useful in life; it generates kindness and consolidates society."' Life, v. 404. See ib. iii. 23. 3 'It is yet remembered of the learned and pious Nelson [the author of Fasts and Festivals] that he was remarkably elegant in his manners and splendid in his dress. He knew, that the eminence of his character drew many eyes upon him; and he was careful not to drive the young or the gay away from religion, by representing it as an enemy to any distinction or enjoyment in which human nature may innocently delight.' Works, iv. 138. The portrait of Nelson, at the top of the staircase in the Bodleian, is of a splendidly-dressed man. 'You find the King of Prussia dresses plain because the dignity of his character is sufficient.' Life, ii. 475. 'Whoever differs from any general custom is supposed both to think and to proclaim himself wiser than the answer answer to the arguments urged by Puritans, Quakers, &c. against showy decorations of the human figure, I once heard him exclaim, 'Oh, let us not be found when our Master calls us, ripping the lace off our waistcoats, but the spirit of contention from our souls and tongues! Let us all conform in outward customs, which are of no consequence, to the manners of those whom we live among, and despise such paltry distinctions'. Alas, Sir (continued he), a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way thither the sooner in a grey one.' On an occasion of less consequence, when he turned his back on Lord Bolingbroke in the rooms at Brighthelmstone, he made this excuse: 'I am not obliged, Sir (said he to Mr. Thrale, who stood fretting), to find reasons for respecting the rank of him who will not condescend to declare it by his dress or some other visible mark: what are stars and other signs of superiority made for?' The next evening however he made us comical amends, by sitting by the same nobleman, and haranguing very loudly about the nature and use and abuse of divorces. Many people gathered round them to hear what was said, and when my husband called him away, and told him to whom he had been talking-received an answer which I will not write down 2. rest of the world. . . . A young fellow is always forgiven, and often applauded, when he carries a fashion to an excess; but never if he stops short of it. The first is ascribed to youth and fire; but the latter is imputed to an affectation of singularity or superiority.' Chesterfield's Letters to his Son, iv. 23. 'He repeated his observation that the differences among Christians are really of no consequence.' Life, iii. 188. 2 Mrs. Piozzi has noted in the margin:-' He said, "Why, Sir, I did not know the man. If he will put on no other mark of distinction let us make him wear his horns.”’ Hayward's Piozzi, i. 293. He was the nephew of the famous Lord Bolingbroke. He had been divorced from his wife, who thereupon married Topham Beauclerk. Life, ii. 246. Johnson in a note on the last scene in the third act of The Merry Wives of Windsor says:-'There is no image which our author appears so fond of as that of a cuckold's horns. Scarcely a light character is introduced that does not endeavour to produce merriment by some allusion to horned husbands.' Chesterfield wrote to his son on Feb. 11, 1766 :-'Lord, having parted with his wife, now keeps another w-e at a great expense. I fear he is totally undone.' Letters, iv. 238. 'Bolingbroke' is the name suppressed. See Mahon's edition, v. 472. Though |