298 Anecdotes.
��Mr. Johnson's knowledge of literary history was extensive and surprising : he knew every adventure of every book you could name almost, and was exceedingly pleased with the opportunity which writing the Poets' Lives gave him to display it. He loved to be set at work, and was sorry when he came to the end of the business he was about x . I do not feel so myself with regard to these sheets : a fever which has preyed on me while I wrote them over for the press, will perhaps lessen my power of doing well the first, and probably the last work I should ever have thought of presenting to the Public. I could doubtless wish so to conclude it, as at least to shew my zeal for my friend, whose life, as I once had the honour and happiness of being useful to, I should wish to record a few particular traits of, that those who read should emulate his goodness ; but seeing the necessity of making even virtue and learning such as his agree able, that all should be warned against such coarseness of \ manners, as drove even from him those who loved, honoured, and "esteemed him. His wife's daughter, Mrs. Lucy Porter of Litch- field, whose veneration for his person and character has ever been the greatest possible 2 , being opposed one day in conversation by a clergyman who came often to her house, and feeling some what offended, cried out suddenly, Why, Mr. Pearson 3 , said she, you are just like Dr. Johnson, I think : I do not mean that you are a man of the greatest capacity in all the world like
its effect. All the booksellers were as the following in his letters must
anxious to get their names put down have shown Mrs. Thrale that the
for copies of it, and the edition, veneration was sometimes veiled,
though very large, was immediately 'July 20, 1767. Miss Lucy is more
sold.' kind and civil than I expected.'
1 About a revised edition of his Letters, i. 129. 'Lucy is a philo- Dictionary he wrote : ' I am now sopher, and considers me as one of within a few hours of being able to the external and accidental things send the whole dictionary to the that are to be taken and left without press, and though I often went slug- emotion.' Ib. i. 180. 'Aug. i, 1775. gishly to the work I am not much Fits of tenderness with Mrs. Lucy delighted at the completion.' Letters, are not common ; but she seems i. 191. now to have a little paroxysm, and
2 Boswell says of her: 'she re- I was not willing to counteract it.' verenced Johnson, and he had a /. 1.359. ' Oct. 31, 1781. She never parental tenderness for her.' Life, was so civil to me before.' Ib. ii. 232. ii. 462. Nevertheless such passages 3 Letters, i. 85, n. 2 ; ii. 86, n. 4.
Dr.
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