APPENDIX.
DR. JOHNSON AND MRS. WILLIAMS—LORD NELSON’S JOURNEY HOME—THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE AND HER MOTHER—OPENING OE THE COFFIN OF CHARLES I.—THE ORANGE MATCH—FLIGHT OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE.
APPENDIX.
DR. JOHNSON AND MRS. WILLIAMS.
In Croker’s Edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, chap, x., there is an extract from a letter addressed by Lady Knight to Mr. Hoole, referring to the incident narrated at pages 14-15 of the Autobiography:
“Dr. Johnson’s political principles ran high, both in Church and State: he wished power to the King and to the heads of the Church, as the laws of England have established; but I know he disliked absolute power: and I am very sure of his disapprobation of the doctrines of the Church of Rome, because, about three weeks before we came abroad, he said to my Cornelia, ‘You are going where the ostentatious pomp of Church ceremonies attracts the imagination; but if they want to persuade you to change, you must remember that by increasing your faith you may be persuaded to become Turk.’ If these were not the words, I have kept up to the express meaning.”
With reference to Dr. Johnson’s visit to a man-of-war, an account of which is given at pages 15-16, Mrs. Piozzi says, at p. 285 of her “Anecdotes,” &c., that “the roughness of the language used on board a man-of-war, where he passed a week on a visit to Captain Knight, disgusted him terribly. He asked an officer what some place was called, and received for answer that it was where the loplolly man kept his loplolly: a reply he considered, not unjustly, as disrespectful, gross, and ignorant.” On this Croker remarks: “Captain Knight, of the Belle Isle, 74, lay for a couple of months of 1762 in Plymouth Sound, and may have been visited by Reynolds and Johnson; but it is unlikely they passed a week on ship-board.” (Note to chap. liii. Boswell’s Johnson.) But it was the Ramilies off Portsmouth, not the Belle Isle off Plymouth, that was visited by the great lexicographer.
The following reminiscences of Mrs. Williams were sent by Lady Knight, from Rome, to Mr. John Hoole, and by him contributed to the European Magazine for October, 1799: