Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies II.djvu/112

 104 Extracts from

��hedge ; and little of the dust that had once settled on his outer garments was ever known to have been disturbed by the brush x. (Page 327.)

The proposal for the Dictionary, and other of his writings, had exhibited Johnson to view in the character of a poet and a philologist: to his moral qualities, and his concern for the interests of religion and virtue, the world were for some time strangers ; but no sooner were these manifested by the publica tion of the Rambler and the Adventurer, than he was looked up to as a master of human life, a practical Christian and a divine ; his acquaintance was sought by persons of the first eminence in literature ; and his house, in respect of the. con versations there, became an academy 2. One person, in par ticular, who seems, for a great part of his life, to have affected the character of a patron of learned and ingenious men, in a letter which I have seen, made him a tender of his friendship in terms to this effect : ' That having perused many of his writings, and thence conceived a high opinion of his learning, his genius, and moral qualities, if Mr. Johnson was inclined to enlarge the circle of his acquaintance, he [the letter-writer] should be glad to be admitted into the number of his friends, and to receive a visit from him.' This person was Mr. Doding- ton, afterwards lord Melcombe, the value and honour of whose patronage, to speak the truth, may in some degree be estimated by his diary lately published 3. How Johnson received this

1 Charlotte Burney, writing in 1 777 ' men of letters have here [in London] or 1778, says : ' Dr. Johnson was no place of rendezvous ; and are, immensely smart, for him for he indeed, sunk and forgotten in the had not only a very decent tidy suit general torrent of the world.' Bur- of cloathes on, but his hands, face, ton's Hume, ii. 385. For Johnson's and linen were clean, and he treated * levee ' see ante, i. 414 ; Life, ii. 118. us with his worsted wig, which Mr. 3 Horace Walpole wrote on June 3, Thrale made him a present of, be- 1784 (Letter s,v\\\. 479) : 'A nephew cause it scarce ever gets out of curl, of Lord Melcombe's heir has pub- 'and he generally diverts himself with lished that Lord's Diary. Though laying [sic] down just after he has drawn by his own hand, and certainly got a fresh wig on.' Early Diary of meant to flatter himself, it is a truer F. Burney, ii. 287. portrait than any of his hirelings

2 Hume, in 1767, complained that would have given. Never was such

invitation

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