Page:Six Essays on Johnson.djvu/45

Rh an unfashionable cast, and destroy that freedom of thought and easiness of manners indispensably requisite to acceptance in the world. Tom has therefore found another way to wisdom. When he rises he goes into a coffee-house, where he creeps so near to men whom he takes to be reasoners as to hear their discourse, and endeavours to remember something which, when it has been strained through Tom’s head, is so near to nothing that what it once was cannot be discovered.’ Tyers’ sketch of Johnson is a slight piece of work, but it has some vivid detail, and is more than once quoted by Boswell.

The next to adventure was the bookseller Kearsley, who had already, before Johnson’s death, published a selection of Beauties from The Rambler. The ''Life of Samuel Johnson, Ll. D.'' (1785) published by Kearsley is said to have been compiled by William Cook, of the Middle Temple, barrister-at-law, who subsequently wrote Memoirs of Foote and of Macklin. Cook was a member of the Essex Head Club, founded by Johnson in the last year of his life, but his Life (if it be his) is a mere trading venture, hastily launched to catch the favourable breeze. The Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the late Dr. Samuel Johnson, which was printed the same year for J. G. Walker, is commonly attributed to the Rev. William Shaw, a native of the Hebrides, whom Johnson had encouraged to prepare a Gaelic dictionary. A much more noteworthy book, by an author with a larger claim in Johnson, was issued the following year. ''Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson Ll. D. during the last twenty years of his life, by Hester Lynch Piozzi'' (1786) is Mrs. Thrale’s contribution to our knowledge of her friend and preceptor. It