416 Minor Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson.
for it. * There was that woman,' said one of them, ' to whom you yesterday gave half-a-crown, why she was at church to-day in long sleeves and ribands/ 'Well, my dear/ replied Johnson, 1 and if it gave the woman pleasure, why should she not wear them 1 ?'
He had long promised to write Mr. Walmesley's epitaph, and Mrs. W. waited for it, in order to erect a monument to her husband's memory 2 : procrastination, however, one of the Doctor's few failings, prevented its being finished ; he was engaged upon it in his last illness, and when the physicians, at his own request, informed him of his danger, he pushed the papers from before him, saying, 'It was too late to write the epitaph of another, when he should so soon want one himself/
��BY WILLIAM WELLER PEPYS.
[From a letter from Mr. Pepys to Mrs. Montagu in the Montagu MSS., dated August 4, 1781. Croker's Boswell, x. 114. For W. W. Pepys, see Life, iv. 82 ; Letters, ii. 136.]
I met Johnson some time ago at Streatham, and such a day did we pass in disputation upon the Life of our dear friend Lord Lyttelton, as I trust it will never be my fate to pass again 3 . The moment the cloth was removed he challenged me to come out (as he called it), and say what I had to object to his Life of Lord Lyttelton. This, you see, was a call which, however dis-
��( K
��What signifies," says some years, as her epitaph in Lichfield
one, "giving half-pence to common Cathedral shows. He has left a
beggars ? they only lay it out in gin monument to Walmesley's memory in
or tobacco?" " And why should they the Lives of the Poets. Life, i. 81.
be denied such sweeteners of their He wrote epitaphs on his father,
existence ? " says Johnson. 3 Ante, i. mother and brother, a fortnight be-
204. fore his death. Ib. iv. 393. ' He
' He is an old man (said Burke of would also/ says Hawkins (ante, ii.
a beggar) ; and if gin be his com- 123), ' have written in Latin verse an
fort, let him have gin.' Prior's epitaph for Mr. Garrick, but found
Burke, ed. 1872, p. 242. himself unequal to the task.'
2 She outlived Johnson nearly two 3 Ib. i. 244; ii. 193.
agreeable
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