Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies I.djvu/407

 Johnson's Life and Genius.

��a bookseller, in Paternoster row ; Mr. Samuel Dyer, a learned young man ; Dr. William M'Ghie x, a Scotch physician ; Dr. Edmund Barker 2, a young physician ; Dr. Bathurst, another young physician ; and Sir John Hawkins. This list is given by Sir John, as it should seem, with no other view than to draw a spiteful and malevolent character of almost every one of them. Mr. Dyer, whom Sir John says he loved with the affection of a brother 3, meets with the harshest treatment, because it was his maxim, that to live in peace with mankind, and in a temper to do good offices, was the most essential part of our duty*. That notion of moral goodness gave umbrage to Sir John Hawkins, and drew down upon the memory of his friend the bitterest

��Ryland and Payne were among the four survivors of the old Club who dined together a few times in 1783-4. Letters, ii. 358, 363, 388, 390.

1 M'Ghie had served as a volunteer on the side of government in 1745. ' He was a learned, ingenious and modest man, and one of those few of his country whom Johnson could endure. To say the truth, he treated him with great civility, and may almost be said to have loved him.' Hawkins, p. 233.

2 Barker, like Dyer, had studied at Leyden. * He was an excellent classical scholar, a deep metaphy sician, and had read the Italian poets ; but he was a thoughtless young man, and in all his habits of dress and appearance so slovenly as made him the jest of all his com panions. Physicians in his time were used to be full dressed ; and in his garb of a full suit, a brown tye-wig with a knot over one shoulder, and a long yellow-hilted sword, and his hat under his arm he was a caricature. In his religious principles he pro fessed himself an Unitarian, for which Johnson so often snubbed him, that his visits to us became less and less frequent.' Ib. p. 233.

��3 Hawkins writes (p. 230), * whom I once loved with the affection of a brother.'

4 Hawkins is malignant enough, but Murphy does not quote him fairly. He had described how Dyer, who had been brought up for the dissenting ministry, had sunk into sloth and materialism. He came at last to think ' that those mistook their interest and shewed their igno rance of human life who abstained from any pleasure that disturbed not the quiet of families or the order of society ; that natural appetites re quired gratification ; that the in dulgence of the irascible passions alone was vice ; and that to live in peace with all mankind, &c.,' p. 230.

Hawkins, in this character of Dyer, according to M alone (Prior's Life of M alone, p. 419) aims a stab at the two Burkes. Dyer, he says, lost his fortune ' by contracting a fatal intimacy with some persons of des perate fortunes who were dealers in India stock.' These persons, says Malone, were Edmund Burke and his cousin. Dyer met Edmund Burke at the Literary Club, of which they were both members. Life, i. 478.

imputations.

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