How came Anna Seward to dominate and reign as the Queen over the literary society in Lichfield? The great “magnetic” power she must have possessed accounts to a large extent for the popular adulation bestowed upon her. Still, the circumstances of her residence in the Episcopal Palace, and her being by birth a lady and endowed with a certain amount of wealth, added to an attractive presence, must have greatly helped her to attain the position.
Anna Seward certainly hated, and hated venomously, Dr. Johnson, who was afraid of her, and he, she says, “hated me.” She could not endure his mannerisms, but mimicked his gestures and curious demeanours; calling him “a despot,” “the old literary Colossus,” an “envious calumniator,” “surly Samuel Johnson,” “the massive Being,” “the old elephant,” and “a growler.”
In 1787, Anna Seward tells us, she became acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. Piozzi
(formerly Mrs. Thrale), and on the latter’s publication of Johnson’s letters, she writes:—“Greatly as I admired Johnson’s talents and revered his knowledge, and formidable as I felt the powers to be of his witty sophistry, yet did a certain quickness of spirit, and zeal for the reputation of my favourite authors, irresistibly urge me to defend them against his spleenful injustice—a temerity, which I was well aware made him dislike me, notwithstanding the coaxing regard he always expressed for me on his first salutations on returning to Lichfield.” Again, in other letters, she says:—. . . “I have had frequent opportunities of conversing with that wonderful man (Dr. Johnson). Seldom did I listen to him without admiring the great powers of his mind, and feeling concern and pain at the malignance of his disposition. He would sometimes be just to the virtues and literary fame of others, if they had not been praised in the conversation before his opinion was asked—if they had been previously praised, never.” . . .
“What right had a man who wrote a play
for the stage, to avow contempt for the theatric profession”? she wrote, when referring to Johnson’s envy of David Garrick. Boswell admitted, when he visited Anna Seward, in 1785, at Lichfield, that Johnson was “galled by Garrick’s prosperity.” . . . “Who can think Johnson’s heart a good one? In the course of many years’ personal acquaintance with him, I never knew a single instance in which the praise (from another’s lip) of any human being, excepting that of Mrs. Thrale, was not a caustic on his spirit; and this, whether their virtues or abilities were the subject of encomium.” His opinions of poetry were, she thought, “so absurd and inconsistent with each other, that, though almost any of his dogmas may be clearly and easily confronted, yet the attempt is but combating an hydra-headed monster . . . Johnson’s ‘Lives of the Poets,’ and all the records of his own life and conversation, prove that envy did deeply stain his spirit. To your question, ‘Whom could Johnson envy’? I answer, all his superiors in genius, all his equals; in short, at times, every celebrated author, living or
dead . . . I cannot help feeling that he has superiors, and that in a very large degree, though they will not be found amongst our essayists, where I acknowledge his pre-eminence. Johnson was a very bright star, yet to Shakespeare and Milton, he was but as a star to the sun . . . Gray was indolent, and wrote but little; yet that little proves him the first genius of the period in which he lived. I have been assured that he had more learning than Johnson, and he certainly was a very superior poet. Johnson felt the superiority, and for that he hated him. . . . Johnson’s first ambition was to be distinguished as a poet, and as a poet he was first celebrated. His fine satire, ‘London,’ had considerable reputation; yet it neither eclipsed, nor had power to eclipse, the satires of Pope.”
The account she has given of Johnson’s last days and hours differs very widely from Macaulay’s version, who states that, “when at length the moment, dreaded through so many years, came close, the dark cloud passed away from Johnson’s mind. His temper became unusually patient and gentle;
he ceased to think with terror of death, and that which lies beyond death; he spake much of the mercy of God and of the propitiation of Christ.” In a letter written by Anna Seward to T. S. Whalley, dated November 7th, 1784, she said, “The extinction, in our sphere, of that mighty spirit, approaches fast. A confirmed dropsy deluges the vital source. It is melancholy to observe with what terror he contemplates his approaching fate.” In a letter to Mrs. Knowles (the wife of Dr. Knowles, an eminent physician in London, and in her younger days a well-known Staffordshire beauty), dated March 27th, 1785, Anna Seward says, “O, yes, as you observe, dreadful were the horrors which attended poor Johnson’s dying state. His religion was certainly not of that nature which sheds comfort on a death-bed pillow. I believe his faith was sincere, and therefore could not fail to reproach his heart, which had swelled with pride, envy, and hatred, through the whole course of his existence. But religious feeling, on which you lay so great stress, was not the desideratum in
Johnson’s virtue.” The reader must decide for himself which of these two contradictory accounts he will believe. It may be remarked that she was in “the almost daily habit of contemplating his dying,” which she describes as “a very melancholy spectacle.” She informs us that it was at Johnson’s repeatedly expressed desire that she often visited him.