to have acquired some practice as a surgeon. Probably about 1746 he made the acquaintance of Dr. Johnson. In a letter to Baretti of 20 July 1762 Johnson speaks of him as recently married to a woman of the town, who, notwithstanding the fact that their place of rendezvous had always been a small coal-shed in Fetter Lane, had persuaded Levett ‘that she was nearly related to a man of fortune, but was injuriously kept by him out of large possessions.’ Goldsmith, alluding to this misfortune to Boswell in July 1763, said: ‘Levett is now become miserable, and that insures the protection of Johnson.’ It appears that Johnson was the means of effecting a separation between the pair, and some time in 1763 Levett became a regular inmate of his house. Boswell calls him ‘aukward and uncouth,’ but Johnson found him ‘useful and companionable.’ ‘Levett, madam,’ he said to Mrs. Thrale, ‘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, Diary and Letters, i. 63). After making tea for Johnson on the latter's rising at about eleven o'clock in the morning, Levett usually went round among his patients, then attended Hunter's lectures, and did not return until late at night. His relations with the rest of the household were somewhat strained. His chief failing was over-indulgence in drink, but this, as Johnson observes, was mainly the result of extreme 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. 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.’
He died suddenly on 17 Jan. 1782, and was buried on 20 Jan. in Bridewell cemetery (Wheatley and Cunningham, i. 244). Writing of his loss some weeks after to Bennet Langton [q. v.], whom Levett had in the first instance introduced to him, Johnson remarked: ‘How much soever I valued him, I now wish that I had valued him more.’ In the ‘Annual Register’ for 1783 (p. 189) appeared some verses by Johnson on his humble friend, which make touching reference to Levett's good qualities. Some time before his own death Johnson discovered by means of advertisement Levett's brothers, who were living obscurely in Yorkshire, and divided his modest savings among them.
[Gent. Mag. 1785, pt. i. pp. 101–2; Nichols's Lit. Illustr. vi. 147; Boswell's Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, passim; Hawkins's Johnson, p. 435; Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes and Letters, passim.]
LEVI, DAVID (1740–1799), Jewish controversialist, born in London in 1740, was son of Mordecai Levi, a member of the London congregation of German and Polish Jews. He was at an early age apprenticed to a shoemaker, but practised that trade without much success, and subsequently made a precarious livelihood as a hat-dresser.
A design of sending him in youth to Poland to study Hebrew literature under his great-grandfather, a Polish rabbi, came to nothing owing to the rabbi's removal at the time to Palestine. But Levi soon acquired at home a good knowledge of Hebrew, and read in his leisure the chief biblical commentaries and many English theological works. In 1783 he published ‘A Succinct Account of the Rites and Ceremonies of the Jews, in which their Religious Principles and Tenets are Explained, particularly the Doctrines of the Resurrection, Predestination, and Free Will, and the opinion of Dr. Humphrey Prideaux concerning these Tenets refuted.’ Between 1785 and 1787 he published in weekly parts, under the title of ‘Lingua Sacra,’ a Hebrew grammar, with explanations in English and a Hebrew-English dictionary. The work formed three bulky octavo volumes, and their periodical issue entailed so much labour on Levi that he was compelled to abandon his ‘mechanical business,’ and to work at them sixteen hours a day (see vol. iii. ad fin. ‘To the Public’).
In 1787 Joseph Priestley published ‘Letters to the Jews, inviting them to an Amicable Discussion of the Evidences of Christianity.’ Levi replied in the same year in ‘Letters to Dr. Priestley.’ In the advertisement he described himself as ‘a sincere enquirer after truth,’ who did not desire to reflect upon ‘true Christianity,’ but he sought to refute the authenticity of the New Testament, and to vindicate on logical grounds his adherence to Judaism. Dr. Priestley thought the attempt ‘poor,’ but deemed it wise to notice it at length in a second part of his ‘Letters’ (1788), whereupon Levi retorted in a second tract (1789), in which he also answered many others who had written answers to his first tract, viz. Samuel Cooper, James Bicheno, Philip David Krauter, John Hadley Swain, and Anselm Bayley [q. v.] Priestley, after reading this reply, declared Levi unworthy of further notice, and the Rev. Richard Beere seems to have continued the controversy singlehanded in ‘An Epistle to the Chief Priest and Elders of the Jews’ (1789). Levi found a new antagonist in 1795, when he published ‘Letters to Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, M.P., in Answer to his Testimony of the Authenticity of the Prophecies of Richard
