70 Anecdotes by Joseph Cradock.
to keep him from the tyranny of his own gloomy thoughts. A gentleman venturing to say to Johnson, ' Sir, I wonder some times that you condescend so far as to attend a city club.' ' Sir, the great chair of a full and pleasant club is, perhaps, the throne of human felicity 1 .'
I had not the honour to be at all intimate with Johnson till about the time he began to publish his Lives of the Poets ; and how he got through that arduous labour is, in some measure, still a mystery to me : he must have been greatly assisted by booksellers 2 . I had some time before lent him Euripides with Milton's manuscript notes : this, though he did not minutely examine (see Joddrel's Euripides), yet he very handsomely re turned it, and mentioned it in his Life of Milton 3 . In the course of conversation one day I dropped out to him, that Lord Harborough (then the Rev. 4 ) was in possession of a very valu able collection of manuscript poems, and that amongst them there were two or three in the handwriting of King James I ; that they were bound up handsomely in folio, and were entitled Sackvilles Poems. These he solicited me to borrow for him, and Lord Harborough very kindly intrusted them to me for his perusal.
Harris's Hermes was mentioned. I said, ' I think the book is too abstruse ; it is heavy.' ' It is ; but a work of that kind
��1 Cradock misquotes Hawkins communication, and must have Ham- (post, p. 91) 'A tavern chair is mond again. Mr. Johnson would be the throne of human felicity.' See glad of Blackmore's Essays for a few also Life, ii. 452. days.' Id. ii. 159.
2 Cradock, I suppose, means that 3 'HisZswrz^dfons by Mr. Cradock' s they lent him books, and supplied kindness now in my hands ; the mar- him with facts, and not as Mr. Croker gin is sometimes noted, but I have thinks (ix. 243 n.) that they assisted found nothing remarkable.' Works, him in his manuscript. Thus he vii. 114.
writes to John Nichols desiring that 4 When Johnson was writing the
- some volumes published of Prior's Lives the Rev. Robert Sherard was
papers in two vols. 8vo. may be pro- Earl of Harborough, for it was in
cured.' Letters, ii. 130. Another 1770 that he succeeded his brother,
day he writes: 'Mr. Johnson is who, in spite of marrying four times,
obliged to Mr. Nicol [sic] for his left no heir. Burke's Peerage.
must
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