Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies II.djvu/110

 102 Extracts from

��the human face divine 1, have been a witness to her beauty? which we may suppose had sustained some loss before he married ; her daughter by her former husband being but little younger than Johnson himself. As, during her lifetime, he invited but few of his friends to his house, I never saw her, but I have been told by Mr. Garrick 2, Dr. Hawkesworth, and others, that there was somewhat crazy in the behaviour of them both ; profound respect on his part, and the airs of an antiquated beauty on her's. Johnson had not then been used to the com pany of women 3, and nothing but his conversation rendered him tolerable among them : it was, therefore, necessary that he should practise his best manners to one, whom, as she was descended from an antient family 4, and had brought him a fortune 5, he thought his superior. This, after all, must be said, that he laboured to raise his opinion of her to the highest, by inserting in many of her books of devotion that I have seen, such endearing memorials as these: 'This was dear

Tetty's book.' * This was a prayer which dear Tetty was

accustomed to say,' not to mention his frequent recollection of her in his meditations, and the singularity of his prayers respecting her 6.

To so high a pitch had he worked his remembrance of her, that he requested a divine, of his acquaintance 7, to preach a sermon at her interment, written by himself, but was dissuaded from so ostentatious a display of the virtues of a woman, who, though she was his wife, was but little known. (Page 313.)

Of the beauties of painting, notwithstanding the many eulo- giums on that art which, after the commencement of his friendship with Sir Joshua Reynolds, Johnson inserted in his writings, he had not the least conception ; and this leads me to mention a fact to the purpose, which I well remember. One

1 Paradise Lost, iii. 44. Peatlingae, apud Leicestrienses,

2 Ante, i. 248. ortae.' Life, i. 241, n. 2.

3 See Life, i. 82, for his intimacy 5 She is said to have brought him with some of the first families in and about seven or eight hundred pounds, near Lichfield. Ib. i. 95, n. 3. 6 Ante, i. 14.

4 On her tombstone he describes 7 Dr. Taylor. Ante, i. 476 ; Life, her as 'Antiqua Jarvisiorum gente, 1.241.

evening

�� �