[719] 'Lord Southwell,' said Johnson, 'was the most qualitied man I ever saw.' Post, March 23, 1783.
[720] The account given of Levet in Gent. Mag. lv. 101, shews that he was a man out of the common run. He would not otherwise have attracted the notice of the French surgeons. The writer says:—'Mr. Levet, though an Englishman by birth, became early in life a waiter at a coffee-house in Paris. The surgeons who frequented it, finding him of an inquisitive turn and attentive to their conversation, made a purse for him, and gave him some instructions in their art. They afterwards furnished him with the means of further knowledge, by procuring him free admission to such lectures in pharmacy and anatomy as were read by the ablest professors of that period.' When he lived with Johnson, 'much of the day was employed in attendance on his patients, who were chiefly of the lowest rank of tradesmen. The remainder of his hours he dedicated to Hunter's lectures, and to as many different opportunities of improvement as he could meet with on the same gratuitous conditions.' 'All his medical knowledge,' said Johnson, 'and it is not inconsiderable, was obtained through the ear. Though he buys books, he seldom looks into them, or discovers any power by which he can be supposed to judge of an author's merit.' 'Dr. Johnson has frequently observed that Levet was indebted to him for nothing more than house-room, his share in a penny-loaf at breakfast, and now and then a dinner on a Sunday. His character was rendered valuable by repeated proof of honesty, tenderness, and gratitude to his benefactor, as well as by an unwearied diligence in his profession. His single failing was an occasional departure from sobriety. Johnson would observe, "he was perhaps the only man who ever became intoxicated through motives of prudence. He reflected that, if he refused the gin or brandy offered him by some of his patients, he could have been no gainer by their cure, as they might have had nothing else to bestow on him. This habit of taking a fee, in whatever shape it was exhibited, could not be put off by advice. He would swallow what he did not like, nay what he knew would injure him, rather than go home with an idea that his skill had been exerted without recompense. Though he took all that was offered him, he demanded nothing from the poor."' The writer adds that 'Johnson never wished him to be regarded as an inferior, or treated him like a dependent.' Mrs. Piozzi says:—'When Johnson raised contributions for some distressed author, or wit in want, he often made us all more than amends by diverting descriptions of the lives they were then passing in corners unseen by anybody but himself, and that odd old surgeon whom he kept in his house to tend the outpensioners, and of whom he said most truly and sublimely, that
"In misery's darkest caverns known,"' etc. Piozzi's Anec., p. 118.
'Levet, madam, is a brutal fellow, but I have a good regard for him; for his brutality is in his manners, not in his mind.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 115. 'Whoever called in on Johnson at about midday found him and Levet at breakfast, Johnson, in deshabille, as just risen from bed, and Levet filling out tea for himself and his patron alternately, no conversation passing between them. All that visited him at these hours were welcome. A night's rest and breakfast seldom failed to refresh and fit him for discourse, and whoever withdrew went too soon.' Hawkins's Johnson, p. 435.
How much he valued his poor friend he showed at his death, post, Jan. 20, 1782.
[721]
'O et praesidium et dulce decus meum.'
'My joy, my guard, and sweetest good.'
CREECH. Horace, Odes, i. I. 2.
[722] It was in 1738 that Johnson was living in Castle Street. At the time of Reynolds's arrival in London in 1752 he had been living for some years in Gough Square. Boswell, I suppose, only means to say that Johnson's acquaintance with the Cotterells was formed when he lived in their neighbourhood. Northcote (Life of Reynolds, i. 69) says that the Cotterells lived 'opposite to Reynolds's,' but his account seems based on a misunderstanding of Boswell.
[723] Ante, p. 165.