Burney's Memoirs, ii. 345.
[717] His Lordship was soon after chosen, and is now a member of THE CLUB. BOSWELL. He was father of the future prime-minister, who was born in the following year.
[718] He wrote on June 23:--'What man can do for man has been done for me.' Piozzi Letters, ii.278. Murphy (Life, p. 121) says that, visiting him during illness, he found him reading Dr. Watson's Chymistry (ante, p. 118). 'Articulating with difficulty he said:--"From this book he who knows nothing may learn a great deal, and he who knows will be pleased to find his knowledge recalled to his mind in a manner highly pleasing."'
[719] 'I have, by the migration of one of my ladies, more peace at home; but I remember an old savage chief that says of the Romans with great indignation-ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant [Tacitus, Agricola, c. xxx]. Piozzi Letters, ii. 259.
[720] 'July 23. I have been thirteen days at Rochester, and am just now returned. I came back by water in a common boat twenty miles for a shilling, and when I landed at Billingsgate, I carried my budget myself to Cornhill before I could get a coach, and was not much incommoded' Ib. ii.294. See ante, iv.8, 22, for mention of Rochester.
[721] Murphy (Life, p. 121) says that Johnson visited Oxford this summer. Perhaps he was misled by a passage in the Piozzi Letters (ii. 302) where Johnson is made to write:--'At Oxford I have just left Wheeler.' For left no doubt should be read lost. Wheeler died on July 22 of this year. Gent. Mag. 1783, p. 629.
[722] This house would be interesting to Johnson, as in it Charles II, 'for whom he had an extraordinary partiality' (ante, ii. 341), lay hid for some days after the battle of Worcester. Clarendon (vi. 540) describes it 'as a house that stood alone from neighbours and from any highway.' Charles was lodged 'in a little room, which had been made since the beginning of the troubles for the concealment of delinquents.'
[723] 'I told Dr. Johnson I had heard that Mr. Bowles was very much delighted with the expectation of seeing him, and he answered me:--"He is so delighted that it is shocking. It is really shocking to see how high are his expectations." I asked him why, and he said:--"Why, if any man is expected to take a leap of twenty yards, and does actually take one of ten, everybody will be disappointed, though ten yards may be more than any other man ever leaped."' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii.260. On Oct. 9, he wrote:--'Two nights ago Mr. Burke sat with me a long time. We had both seen Stonehenge this summer for the first time.' Piozzi Letters, ii.315.
[724] Salisbury is eighty-two miles from Cornhill by the old coach-road. Johnson seems to have been nearly fifteen hours on the journey.
[725] 'Aug. 13, 1783. I am now broken with disease, without the alleviation of familiar friendship or domestic society. I have no middle state between clamour and silence, between general conversation and self-tormenting solitude. Levett is dead, and poor Williams is making haste to die.' Piozzi Letters, ii.301. 'Aug. 20. This has been a day of great emotion; the office of the Communion of the Sick has been performed in poor Mrs. Williams's chamber.' Ib. 'Sept. 22. Poor Williams has, I hope, seen the end of her afflictions. She acted with prudence and she bore with fortitude. She has left me.
"Thou thy weary [worldly] task hast done, Home art gone and ta'en thy wages."
[Cymbeline, act iv. sc. 2.]
Had she had good humour and prompt elocution, her universal curiosity and comprehensive knowledge would have made her the delight of all that knew her.' Ib. p. 311.
[726] Johnson (Works, viii. 354) described in 1756 such a companion as he found in Mrs. Williams. He quotes Pope's Epitaph on Mrs. Corbet, and continues:--'I have always considered this as the most valuable of all Pope's epitaphs; the subject of it is a character not discriminated by any shining or eminent peculiarities; yet that which really makes, though not the splendour, the felicity of life, and that which every wise man will choose for his final and lasting companion in the languor of age, in the quiet of privacy, when he departs, weary and disgusted, from the ostentatious, the volatile and the vain. Of such a character which the dull overlook, and the gay despise, it was fit that the value should be made known, and the dignity established.' See ante, i.232.
[727] Pr. and Med. p. 226. BOSWELL.
[728] I conjecture that Mr. Bowles is the friend. The account follows close on the visit to his house, and contains a mention of Johnson's attendance at a lecture at Salisbury.
[729] A writer in Notes and Queries, 1st S. xii. 149, says:--'Mr. Bowles had married a descendant of Oliver Cromwell, viz. Dinah, the fourth daughter of Sir Thomas Frankland, and highly valued himself upon this connection with the Protector.' He adds that Mr. Bowles was an active Whig.
[730] Mr. Malone observes, 'This, however, was certainly a mistake, as appears from the Memoirs published by Mr. Noble.