Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies I.djvu/292

 ��A necdotes.

��of reputation, without longing to taste the froth from every stroke of the oar V

With regard to slight insults from newspaper abuse, I have already declared his notions 2 : ' They sting one (says he) but as a fly stings a horse 3 ; and the eagle will not catch flies.' He once told me however, that Cummyns the famous Quaker, whose friendship he valued very highly, fell a sacrifice to their insults, having declared on his death-bed to Dr. Johnson, that the pain of an anonymous letter, written in some of the common prints of the day, fastened on his heart, and threw him into the slow fever of which he died 4.

��Nor was Cummyns the only valuable member so lost to society : Hawkesworth, the pious, the virtuous, and the wise, for want of that fortitude which casts a shield before the merits of his friend, fell a lamented sacrifice to wanton malice and cruelty, I know not how provoked 5 ; but all in turn feel the lash of

��1 Mrs. Piozzi says, in a marginal note on one of Johnson's letters : ardson had lived till / came out, my praises would have added two or three years to his life. " For," says Dr. Johnson, "that fellow died merely for want of change among his flat terers ; he perished for want of more, like a man obliged to breathe the same air till it is exhausted." ' Hay- ward's Piozzi, ii. 77.
 * Dr. Johnson said, that if Mr. Rich

2 Ante, p. 270.

3 Speaking of the attack made by Edwards in his Canons of Criticism on Warburton, Johnson said : ' A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince ; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.' Life, i. 263, n. 3.

4 'In 1745 m Y fnend Tom Gum ming the Quaker, said he would not fight, but he would drive an ammuni tion cart.' Id. iv. 212. See also ib. v. 98, 230.

��5 Hawkesworth was charged with impiety in doubting the efficacy of prayer. According to Malone the attacks made on him ' affected him so much that from low spirits he was seized with a nervous fever, which on account of the high living he had indulged in had the more power on him ; and he is supposed to have put an end to his life by intentionally taking an immoderate dose of opium.' Prior's Malone, p. 441-

' But what, we are told, completed his chagrin was the notice frequently given in an infamous magazine pub lished at that time, that "All the amorous passages and descriptions in Dr. Hawk th's Collection of Voyages should be selected and il lustrated with a suitable plate." And this, in defiance of public decency, was actually done ; and he, whose fame had been raised on his labours in the cause of piety and morals was censure

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