When one day he had at my house taken tincture of antimony instead of emetic wine, for a vomit, he was himself the person to direct us what to do for him, and managed with as much coolness and deliberation as if he had been prescribing for an indifferent person. Though on another occasion, when he had lamented in the most piercing terms his approaching dissolution, and conjured me solemnly to tell him what I thought, while Sir Richard Jebb was perpetually on the road to Streatham, and Mr. Johnson seemed to think himself neglected if the physician left him for an hour only, I made him a steady, but as I thought a very gentle harangue, in which I confirmed all that the doctor had been saying; how no present danger could be expected, but that his age and continued ill-health must naturally accelerate the arrival of that hour which can be escaped by none. “And this,” says Johnson, rising in great anger, “is the voice of female friendship, I suppose, when the hand of the hangman would be softer.”
Another day, when he was ill, and exceedingly low-spirited, and persuaded that death was not far distant, I appeared before him in a dark-coloured gown, which his bad sight, and worse apprehensions, made him mistake for an iron-grey. “Why do you delight,” said he, “thus to thicken the gloom of misery that surrounds me? Is not here sufficient accumulation of horror without anticipated mourning?” “This is not mourning, sir,” said I, drawing the curtain, that the light might fall upon the silk, and show it was a purple mixed with green. “Well, well,” replied he, changing his voice, “you little creatures should never wear those sort of clothes, however; they are unsuitable in every way. What! have not all insects gay colours?” I relate these instances chiefly to show that the fears of death itself could not suppress his wit, his sagacity, or his temptation to sudden resentment.
Mr. Johnson did not like that his friends should bring their manuscripts for him to read, and he liked still less to read them when they were brought. Sometimes, however, when he could not refuse, he would take the play or poem, or whatever it was, and give the people his opinion from some one page he had peeped into. A gentleman carried him his tragedy, which, because he loved the author, Johnson took, and it lay about our rooms some time. “What answer did you give your friend, sir?” said I, after the book had been called for. “I told him,” replied he, “that there was too much Tig and Tirry in it!” Seeing me laugh most violently, “Why, what would’st have, child?” said he. “I looked at the dramatis, and there was Tigranes and Tiridates, or Teribazus, or such stuff. A man can tell but what he knows, and I never got any farther than the first page. Alas, madam!” continued he, “how few books are there of which one ever can possibly arrive at the last page. Was there ever yet anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting ‘Don Quixote,’ ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ and the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress?’” After Homer’s Iliad, Mr. Johnson confessed that the work of Cervantes was the greatest in the world, speaking of it I mean as a book of entertainment. And when we consider that every other author’s admirers are confined to his countrymen, and perhaps to the literary classes among them, while “Don Quixote” is a sort of common property, an universal classic, equally tasted by the court and the cottage, equally applauded in France and England as in Spain, quoted by every servant, the amusement of every age from infancy to decrepitude; the first book you see on every shelf, in every shop, where books are sold, through all the states of Italy; who can refuse his consent to an avowal of the superiority of Cervantes to all other modern writers? Shakespeare himself has, till lately, been worshipped only at home, though his plays are now the favourite amusements of Vienna; and when I was at Padua some months ago, Romeo and Juliet was acted there under the name of Tragedia Veronese; while engravers and translators live by the hero of La Mancha in every nation, and the sides of miserable inns all over England and France, and I have heard Germany too, are adorned with the exploits of Don Quixote. May his celebrity procure my pardon for a digression in praise of a writer who, through four volumes of the most exquisite pleasantry and genuine humour, has never been seduced to overstep the limits of propriety, has never called in the wretched auxiliaries of obscenity or profaneness; who trusts to nature and sentiment alone, and never misses of that applause which Voltaire and Sterne labour to produce, while honest merriment bestows her unfading crown upon Cervantes.
Dr. Johnson was a great reader of French literature, and delighted exceedingly in Boileau’s works. Moliere, I think, he had hardly sufficient taste of, and he used to condemn me for preferring La Bruyere to the Duc de Rochefoucault, who, he said, was the only gentleman writer who wrote like a professed author. The asperity of his harsh sentences, each of them a sentence of condemnation, used to disgust me, however; though it must be owned that, among the necessaries of human life, a rasp is reckoned one as well as a razor.
Mr. Johnson did not like any one who said they were happy, or who said any one else was so. “It is all cant,” he would cry; “the dog knows he is miserable all the time.” A friend whom he loved exceedingly, told him on some occasion, notwithstanding, that his wife’s sister was really happy, and called upon the lady to confirm his assertion, which she did somewhat roundly, as we say, and with an accent and manner capable of offending Mr. Johnson, if her position had not been sufficient, without anything more, to put him in very ill-humour. “If your sister-in-law is really the contented being she professes herself, sir,” said he, “her life gives the lie to every research of humanity; for she is happy without health, without beauty, without money, and without understanding.” This story he told me himself, and when I expressed something of the horror I felt, “The same stupidity,” said he, “which prompted her to extol felicity she never felt, hindered her from feeling what shocks you on repetition. I tell you, the woman is ugly and sickly and foolish and poor; and would it not make a man hang himself to hear such a creature say it was happy?
“The life of a sailor was also a continual scene of danger and exertion,” he said; “and the manner in which time was spent shipboard would make all who saw a cabin envy a gaol.” 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; for though in the course of these memoirs I have been led to mention Dr. Johnson’s tenderness towards poor people, I do not wish to mislead my readers, and make them think he had any delight in mean manners or coarse expressions. Even dress itself, when it resembled that of the vulgar, offended him exceedingly; and when he had condemned me many times for not adorning my children with more show than I thought useful or elegant, I presented a little girl to him who came o’visiting one evening covered with shining ornaments, to see if he would approve of the appearance she made. When they were gone home, “Well, sir,” said I, “how did you like little miss? I hope she was fine enough.” “It was the finery of a beggar,” said he, “and you know it was; she looked like a native of Cow Lane dressed up to be carried to Bartholomew Fair.”
His reprimand to another lady for crossing her little child’s handkerchief before, and by that operation dragging down its head oddly and unintentionally, was on the same principle. “It is the beggar’s fear of cold,” said he, “that prevails over such parents, and so they pull the poor thing’s head down, and give it the look of a baby that plays about Westminster Bridge, while the mother sits shivering in a niche.”
I commended a young lady for her beauty and pretty behaviour one day, however, to whom I thought no objection could have been made. “I saw her,” says Dr. Johnson, “take a pair of scissors in her left hand, though; and for all her father is now become a nobleman, and as you say, excessively rich, I should, were I a youth of quality ten years hence, hesitate between a girl so neglected, and a negro.”
It was indeed astonishing how he could remark such minutenesses with a sight so miserably imperfect; but no accidental position of a ribband escaped him, so nice was his observation, and so rigorous his demands of propriety. When I went with him to Lichfield and came downstairs to breakfast at the inn, my dress did not please him, and he made me alter it entirely before he would stir a step with us about the town, saying most satirical things concerning the appearance I made in a riding-habit, and adding, “’Tis very strange that such eyes as yours cannot discern propriety of dress. If I had a sight only half as good, I think I should see to the centre.”
My compliances, however, were of little worth. What really surprised me was the victory he gained over a lady little accustomed to contradiction, who had dressed herself for church at Streatham one Sunday morning in a manner he did not approve, and to whom he said such sharp and pungent things concerning her hat, her gown, etc., that she hastened to change them, and returning quite another figure received his applause, and thanked him for his reproofs, much to the amazement of her husband, who could scarcely believe his own ears.