io8 Extracts from
��conscience, shear that flock which I am unable to feed.' Upon conversing with him on that inability which was his reason for declining the offer, it was found to be a suspicion of his patience to undergo the fatigue of catechising and instructing a great number of poor ignorant persons, who, in religious matters, had, perhaps, every thing to learn. (Page 365.)
He had removed, about the beginning of the year 1760, to chambers two doors down the Inner-Temple lane ; and I have been told by his neighbour at the corner, that during the time he dwelt there, more enquiries were made at his shop for Mr. Johnson, than for all the inhabitants put together of both the Inner and Middle Temple x . (Page 383.)
Johnson had, early in his life, been a dabbler in physic 2 , and laboured under some secret bodily infirmities that gave him occasion once to say to me, that he knew not what it was to be totally free from pain 3 . He now drew into a closer intimacy with him a man, with whom he had been acquainted from the year I746 4 , one of the lowest practitioners in the art of healing that ever sought a livelihood by it : him he consulted in all that related to his health, and made so necessary to him as hardly to be able to live without him.
The name of this person was Robert Levett. An account of him is given in the Gentleman's Magazine for February 1785 : an earlier than that, I have now lying before me, in a letter from a person in the country to Johnson, written in answer to one in which he had desired to be informed of some particulars respecting his friend Levett, then lately deceased 5 . The sub stance of this information is as follows :
He was born at Kirk Ella, a parish about five miles distant from Hull, and lived with his parents till about twenty years of age. He had acquired some knowledge of the Latin language,
1 Life, i. 350, n. 3 ; Letters, i. 90, end of his life : ' My health has n. 3 ; ante, i. 416. been from my twentieth year such
2 Not only early, but through most as has seldom afforded me a single of his life, 'he was a great dabbler day of ease.' Ib. iv. 147.
in physic.' Life, iii. 152. 4 Life, iv. 137.
3 He wrote to Hector towards the 5 Ib. iv. 143 ; Letters, ii. 243.
and
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