Letters of Dr. Johnson.
��think it a favour if you will be pleased to take the trouble of digging twelve lines of common sense out of this strange scribble, and insert it three times in The Daily Advertiser, at the expence of, gj r
Your humble servant,
SAM: JOHNSON.
Oct. 9. Please to return me the paper.
��To Miss REYNOLDS, Enclosing a letter to be sent in her name to Sir Joshua Reynolds x .
DEAR BROTHER, [Undated.]
I know that complainers are never welcome yet you must allow me to complain of your unkindness, because it lies heavy
��1 From the original in the posses sion of Lady Colomb.
Miss Reynolds for many years kept house for her brother. Northcote, in 1771, writing to his brother during Reynolds's absence from home, says : ' He never writes to her, and, between ourselves, I believe but sel dom converses as we used to do in our family. I found she knew no thing of his having invited me to be his scholar and live in the house till I told her of it. She has the com mand of the household and the ser vants as much as he has.' He knew that Johnson had written a letter in her name, which, he said, must have been detected from the diction. It began : * I am well aware that complaints are always odious, but complain I must.' As it is unlikely that Johnson wrote two letters North- cote's memory was too weak or his imagination too strong to give a correct report.
Her character was the opposite of her brother's. Mme. D'Arblay de scribes her as ' living in an habitual
��.perplexity of mind and irresolution of conduct, which to herself was rest lessly tormenting, and to all around her was teasingly wearisome.' She describes ' her excessive oddness and absurdity.' After leaving her brother's house she returned to Devonshire. ' In a rough draft of one of her letters she says : "The height of my desire is to be able to spend a few months in the year near the arts and sciences, but if you think that it will rather bring my character in question, for my brother to be in London, and I not at his house, I will content myself with residing at Windsor." ' In the end she lodged with Hoole, the translator of Ariosto. North- cote's Reynolds, i. 203 ; Taylor's Rey nolds, i. 91, 416; Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 219.
Reynolds seems to have had but little sympathy with his sisters. Lady Colomb has the original of the fol lowing letter written to him by one of them :
' Thy soul is a shocking spectacle of poverty. When thy outside is, as
at
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