Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies I.djvu/434

 416 Essay on

��appears among his memorandums, was on the 23d of January, I 759 I -

Johnson now found it necessary to retrench his expences. He gave up his house in Gough-square. Mrs. Williams went into lodgings. He retired to Gray's-Inn 2, and soon removed to chambers in the Inner Temple-lane, where he lived in poverty, total idleness, and the pride of literature 3. Magni stat nominis umbra*. Mr. Fitzherbert (the father of Lord St. Helen's, the present minister at Madrid) a man distinguished through life for his benevolence and other amiable qualities 5, used to say, that he paid a morning visit to Johnson, intending from his chambers to send a letter into the city ; but, to his great surprise, he found an author by profession without pen, ink, or paper. The present Bishop of Salisbury 6 was also among those who endeavoured, by constant attention, to sooth the cares of a mind which he knew to be afflicted with gloomy apprehensions. At one of the parties made at his house, Boscovich 7, the Jesuit, who had then lately introduced the Newtonian philosophy at Rome, and, after publishing an elegant Latin poem on the subject, was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, was one of the company invited to meet Dr. Johnson. The conversation at first was mostly in French. Johnson, though thoroughly versed in that language, and a professed admirer of Boileau and La Bruyere 8, did not

1 He did not go to Lichfield. He the inhabitants put together of both

was on the point of setting out the Inner and Middle Temple.'

when the news came of her death. 4 ' Stat magni nominis umbra.'

Life, i. 514; Letters, i. 81 ; ante, Pharsalia, i. 135. Windham (Diary,

p. 22. p. 1 8) jotting down Johnson's talk


 * He moved first to Staple Inn, at Ashbourne, writes : ' Stat magni

on March 23, 1759. Letters, i. 86. nominis umbra would construe as

He was in Gray's Inn in the follow- Umbra quae est magni nom. h. e.

ing December (ib. p. 88) and in Inner celebrata?

Temple Lane in June, 1760. Life, 5 Life, i. 82; iii. 148; Letters, i.

i. 350. In neither of the two Inns 45, n. 6 ; ante, p. 256.

are his rooms known. 6 Dr. Douglas. Ante, p. 397.

3 'I have been told,' says Hawkins 7 Boscovitch. Life, ii. 125, n. 5. (P- 383)> 'by his neighbour at the 8 See ante, p. 334, where he con- corner, that during the time he dwelt demned Mrs. Thrale for preferring there more inquiries were made at La Bruyere to the Duke of Roche- his shop for Mr. Johnson than for all foucault.

understand

�� �