Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies I.djvu/276

 ��Anecdotes.

��was all but wild with excess of sorrow, and scarce knew him when he arrived x : after some minutes however, the doctor pro posed their going to prayers 2, as the only rational method of calming the disorder this misfortune had occasioned in both their spirits. Time, and resignation to the will of God, cured every breach in his heart before I made acquaintance with him 3 , though he always persisted in saying he never rightly recovered the loss of his wife. It is in allusion to her that he records the observation of a female critic, as he calls her, in Gay's Life 4 ; and the lady of great beauty and elegance, mentioned in the criticisms upon Pope's epitaphs, was Miss Molly Aston 5. The person spoken of in his strictures upon Young's poetry 6. is the writer of these Anecdotes, to whom he likewise addressed the following verses when he was in the Isle of Sky with Mr. Boswell 7. The letters written in his journey, I used to tell him, were better than the printed book ; and he was not dis pleased at my having taken the pains to copy them all over 8.

��1 Life, i. 238. It was not Francis who took the message, for he did not enter Johnson's service till about a fortnight after Mrs. Johnson's death. Id. i. 239.

2 According to the account given by Taylor to Boswell, 'Johnson re quested him to join with him in prayer.' Ib. i. 238.

3 Five years after he made ac quaintance with Mrs. Thrale he recorded of his wife : ' When I recollect the time in which we lived together my grief for her departure is not abated.' Ante, p. 51.

4 'As a poet he cannot be rated very high. He was, as I once heard a female critick remark, " of a lower order." ' Works, viii. 70.

5 ' I once heard a lady of great beauty and excellence object to the fourth line, that it contained an un natural and incredible panegyrick. Of this let the ladies judge.' Ib. viii. 355. The fourth line is in the epitaph on Mrs. Corbet :

��' No arts essay'd, but not to be ad- mir'd.'

6 * When he lays hold of an illus tration he pursues it beyond expecta tion, sometimes happily, as in his parallel of Quicksilver with Pleasure, which I have heard repeated with approbation by a lady of whose praise he would have been justly proud, and which is very ingenious, very subtle and almost exact.' Ib. viii. 461.

' Pleasures are few, and fewer we

enjoy ; Pleasure, like quicksilver, is bright

and coy ; We strive to grasp it with our

utmost skill ;

Still it eludes us, and it glitters still ; If seiz'd at last, compute your mighty

gains ; What is it but rank poison in your

veins.' The Universal Passion, Satire v.

7 Life, v. 158; Letters, i. 284.

8 'Do you keep my letters?' he

Here

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