Lives of the English Poets | Page 9

I return you, and all those that have been good to her, my sincerest thanks, and pray God to repay you all with infinite advantage. Write to me, and comfort me, dear child. I shall be glad likewise, if Kitty will write to me. I shall send a bill of twenty pounds in a few days, which I thought to have brought to my mother, but God suffered it not. I have not power nor composure to say much more. God bless you, and bless us all.
I am, dear Miss,
Your affectionate humble servant,
SAM. JOHNSON.
Her attention to his mother, as it is reported in the following words, by Miss Seward, ensured to Johnson the sympathy of Lucy Porter.
From the age of twenty till her fortieth year, when affluence came to her by the death of her eldest brother, she had boarded in Lichfield with Dr. Johnson's mother, who still kept that little bookseller's shop, by which her husband had supplied the scanty means of existence. Meanwhile, Lucy Porter kept the best company of our little city, but would make no engagement on market-days, lest Granny, as she called Mrs. Johnson, should catch cold by serving in the shop. There Lucy Porter took her place, standing behind the counter, nor thought it a disgrace to thank a poor person who purchased from her a penny battledore [10].
To defray the expenses of his mother's funeral, he had recourse to his pen; and, in the evenings of one week produced the Rasselas, for which he received one hundred pounds, and was presented by the purchasers with twenty-five more on its reaching a second edition. Rasselas is a noble monument of the genius of its author. Reflections so profound, and so forcible a draught of some of the great outlines of the human intellect and passions, are to be found in few writers of any age or country. The mind is seldom presented with any thing so marvellous as the character of the philosopher, who has persuaded himself that he is entrusted with the management of the elements. Johnson's dread of insanity was, perhaps, relieved by embodying this mighty conception. He had seen the shadowy form in the twilight, and might have dissipated or eased his apprehensions by coming up to it more closely, and examining into the occasion of his fears. In this tale, the censure which he has elsewhere passed on Milton, that he is a lion who has no skill in dandling the kid, recoils upon himself. His delineation of the female character is wanting in delicacy.
In this year he supplied Mr. Newbery with an Introduction to the World Displayed, a Collection of Voyages and Travels: till the publication of his Shakspeare, in 1765, the only writings acknowledged by himself were a Review of Tytler's Vindication of Mary Queen of Scots, in the Gentleman's Magazine; an Introduction to the Proceedings of the Committee for Clothing the French Prisoners; the Preface to Bolt's Dictionary of Trade and Commerce; a Dedication to the King, of Kennedy's Complete System of Astronomical Chronology, unfolding the Scriptures; and a Dedication to the Queen, of Hoole's Tasso.
In the course of this period, he made a short visit to Lichfield, and thus communicates his feelings on the occasion, in a letter dated July 20, 1762, to Baretti, his Italian friend, who was then at Milan.
Last winter I went down to my native town, where I found the streets much narrower and shorter than I thought I had left them, inhabited by a new race of people, to whom I was very little known. My play-fellows were grown old, and forced me to suspect that I am no longer young. My only remaining friend had changed his principles, and was become the tool of the predominant faction. My daughter-in-law, from whom I expected most, and whom I met with sincere benevolence, had lost the beauty and gaiety of youth, without having gained much of the wisdom of age. I wandered about for five days, and took the first convenient opportunity of returning to a place, where, if there is not much happiness, there is at least such a diversity of good and evil, that slight vexations do not fix upon the heart.
I think in a few weeks to try another excursion; though to what end? Let me know, my Baretti, what has been the result of your return to your own country; whether time has made any alteration for the better, and, whether, when the first rapture of salutation was over, you did not find your thoughts confessed their disappointment.
Henceforward Johnson had no longer to struggle with the evils of extreme poverty. A pension of ��300 was granted to him, in 1762, by His Majesty. Before his acceptance of it, in answer to a question put by him to the