Immortal Memories | Page 5

weaknesses of their natures; not in the stifling manner of Thomas a Kempis, but in a breezy, robust way. Yes, I think that these three works, Rasselas, The Lives of the Poets, and the Prayers and Meditations, make it quite clear that Johnson still holds his place as one of our greatest writers, even if we were not familiar with his many delightful letters, and had not read his Rambler--which his old enemy, Miss Anna Seward, insisted was far better than Addison's Spectator.
All this is only to say that we cannot have too much of Dr. Johnson. The advantage of such a gathering as this is that it helps us to keep that fact alive. Moreover, I feel that it is a good thing if we can hearten those who have devoted themselves to laborious research connected with such matters. Take, for example, the work of Dr. Birkbeck Hill: his many volumes are a delight to the Johnson student. I knew Dr. Hill very well, and I have often felt that his work did not receive half the encouragement that it deserved. We hear sometimes, at least in London, of authors who advertise themselves. I rather fancy that all such advertisement is monopolized by the novelist, and that the newspapers do not trouble themselves very much about literary men who work in other fields than that of fiction. Fiction has much to be said for it, but as a rule it reaps its reward very promptly, both in finance and in fame. No such rewards come to the writer of biography, to the writer of history, to the literary editor. Dr. Hill's beautiful edition of Boswell's Life, with all its fascinating annotation, did not reach a second edition in his lifetime. I am afraid that the sum that he made out of it, or that his publishers made out of it, would seem a very poor reward indeed when gauged by the results in other fields of labour.
Within the past few weeks I have had the privilege of reading a book that continues these researches. Mr. Aleyn Lyell Reade has published a handsome tome, which he has privately printed, entitled Dr. Johnson's Ancestry: His Kinsfolk and Family Connexions. I am glad to hear that the Johnson Museum has purchased a copy, for such a work deserves every encouragement. The author must have spent hundreds of pounds, without the faintest possibility of obtaining either fame or money from the transaction. He seems to have employed copyists in every town in Staffordshire, to copy wills, registers of births and deaths, and kindred records from the past. Now Dr. Birkbeck Hill could not have afforded to do this; he was by no means a rich man. Mr. Reade has clearly been able to spare no expense, with the result that here are many interesting facts corrective of earlier students. The whole is a valuable record of the ancestry of Dr. Johnson. It shows clearly that whereas Dr. Johnson thought very little of his ancestry, and scarcely knew anything of his grandfather on the paternal or the maternal side, he really sprang from a very remarkable stock, notably on the maternal side; and that his mother's family, the Fords, had among their connexions all kinds of fairly prosperous people, clergymen, officials, professional men as well as sturdy yeomen. These ancestors of Dr. Johnson did not help him much to push his way in the world. Of some of them he had scarcely heard. All the same it is of great interest to us to know this; it in a manner explains him. That before Samuel Johnson was born, one of his family had been Lord Mayor of London, another a Sheriff, that they had been associated in various ways, not only with the city of his birth, but also with the great city which Johnson came to love so much, is to let in a flood of fresh light upon our hero. My time does not permit me to do more than make a passing reference to this book, but I should like to offer here a word of thanks to its author for his marvellous industry, and a word of congratulation to him for the extraordinary success that has accrued to his researches.
I mention Mr. Reade's book because it is full of Lichfield names and Lichfield associations, and it is with Dr. Johnson's life-long connexion with Lichfield that all of us are thinking to-night. Now here I may say, without any danger of being challenged by some visitor who has the misfortune not to be a citizen of Lichfield--you who are will not wish to challenge me--that this city has distinguished itself in quite an unique way. I do not believe that it can be found that any other town or city of