Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies II.djvu/386

 378 A Biographical Sketch of Dr. Johnson

��He said, ' he would not sit at table, where a lobster that had been roasted alive was one of the dishes V His charities were many ; only not so extensive as his pity, for that was universal. An evening club, for three nights in every week, was contrived to amuse him, in Essex Street, founded, according to his own words, Johnson asked one of his executors, a few days before his death (which, according to his will, he expected every day 4 ) 'where do you intend to bury me ? ' He answered, ' in Westminster- abbey.' ' Then/ continued he, { place a stone over my grave (probably to notify the spot) that my remains may not be disturbed V Who will come forth with an inscription for him in the Poets' corner 6 ? Who should have thought that Garrick and Johnson would have their last sleep together 7 ? It were to be wished he could have written his own epitaph with propriety. None of the lapidary inscriptions by Dr. Freind 8 have more merit
 * in frequency and parsimony 2 ; ' to which he gave a set of rules,

��1 For his kindness to his cat Hodge see Life, iv. 197, and for the advice he gave to Boswell about old horsts unfit for work, ib. iv. 250.

2 ' We meet thrice a week, and he who misses forfeits two-pence.' Ib. iv. 254. In the Rules the forfeit is three-pence.

3 Ben Jonson wrote Leges Con- vivales that were ' engraven in marble over the chimney in the Apollo of the Old Devil Tavern, Temple Bar ; that being his Club Room.' Jon- son's Works, ed. 1756, vii. 291.

4 'I, SAMUEL JOHNSON, being in full possession of my faculties, but fearing this night may put an end to my life, do ordain this my last Will and Testament.' Life, iv. 402.

5 Ante, ii. 133 ; Life, iv. 419. For his care that his parents' grave should be protected by ' a stone deep, massy, and hard' see ib. iv. 393.

6 His monument with an inscrip tion by Parr was placed in St. Paul's. Ib. iv. 423.

��7 'Within a few feet of Johnson lies (by one of those singular coin cidences in which the Abbeyabounds) his deadly enemy, James Macpher- son.' Stanley's Westminster Abbey, p. 298.

8 Warburton in a note on

' Sepulchral Lies, our holy walls to grace,'

(Dundad, i. 43),

says: 'This is a just satire on the flatteries and falsehoods admitted to be inscribed on the walls of churches in epitaphs ; which occasioned the following epigram : " Freind ! in your epitaphs I'm

griev'd

So very much is said : One half will never be believ'd,

The other never read."' 1 The epigram here inserted (adds Warton) alludes to the too long, and sometimes fulsome epitaphs written by Dr. Freind in pure Latinity, indeed, but full of antitheses.' Warton's Pope's Works, ed. 1822, v. 84.

than

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