Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies II.djvu/422

 ��Minor Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson.

��He used to say of Dr. Hunter, master of the free grammar school, Lichfield, that he never taught a boy in his life he whipped and they learned x. Hunter was a pompous man, and never entered the school without his gown and cassock, and his wig full dressed. He had a remarkably stern look, and Dr. Johnson said, he could tremble at the sight of Miss Seward 2 , she was so like her grandfather.

Mrs. Gastrel was on a visit at Mr. Hervey's, in London, at the time that Johnson was writing the Rambler ; the printer's boy would often come after him to their house, and wait while he wrote off a paper for the press in a room full of company 3. A great portion of the Lives of the Poets was written at Stow Hill 4 : he had a table by one of the windows, which was frequently surrounded by five or six ladies engaged in work or conversation. Mrs. Gastrel had a very valuable edition of Bailey's Dictionary 5 , to which he often referred. She told him that Miss Seward said that he had made poetry of no value by his criticism. * Why, my dear lady/ replied he, ' if silver is dirty, it is not the less valuable for a good scouring 6 .'

��1 * Mr. Langton one day asked him how he had acquired so accurate a knowledge of Latin ; he said, ' My master whipt me very well. Without that, Sir, I should have done nothing.' Life, i. 45. ' Abating his brutality, he was a very good master.' Ib. ii. 146. See ante, i. 159.

2 The epigram in Miss Edge- worth's Absentee (ch. 16)

' Two passions alternately govern

her fate, Her business is love, but her

pleasure is hate' was made by R. L. Edgeworth on Miss Seward. My authority for this statement is his grandson, Professor Edgeworth.

3 Life, i. 203 ; iii. 42. ( The ori ginal manuscripts of the Rambler,' writes Hawkins (p. 382), 'have passed through my hands, and I am war ranted to say that he never blotted

��out a line.' See Life, i. 331, for his writing ah Idler in half an hour.

4 This is a great exaggeration. The composition of the Lives spread over not much less than four years, from Easter 1777 to the beginning of 1781. In 1778 and 1780 he did not he spent in it a few weeks.

5 It is not easy to understand how any edition of Bailey could be 'very valuable.' See ante, ii. 95.

6 See Life, iv. 331, for ' a high com pliment which Johnson paid to Miss Seward ' on her Ode on Captain Cook. R. L. Edgeworth wrote to Sir Walter Scott : ' Now, to my certain knowledge, most of the pas sages which have been selected in the various reviews of that work were written by Dr. Darwin.' Memoirs of R. L. Edgeworth, p. 399. Never theless Miss Seward wrote : ' So

A large

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