Thrale and you took me up. I intend, however, to disappoint the rogues, and either make you write the life, with Taylor's intelligence, or, which is better, do it myself, after outliving you all. I am now," added he, "keeping a diary, in hopes of using it for that purpose some time." Here the conversation stopped, from my accidentally looking in an old magazine of the year 1768, where I saw the following lines with his name to them, and asked if they were his:--Verses said to be written by Dr. Samuel Johnson, at the request of a gentleman to whom a lady had given a sprig of myrtle.
"What hopes, what terrors, does thy gift create, Ambiguous emblem of uncertain fate;The myrtle, ensign of supreme command, Consigned by Venus to Melissa's hand:
Not less capricious than a reigning fair, Now grants, and now rejects a lover's prayer.
In myrtle shades oft sings the happy swain, In myrtle shades despairing ghosts complain:
The myrtle crowns the happy lovers' heads, The unhappy lover's grave the myrtle spreads:
Oh, then, the meaning of thy gift impart, And ease the throbbings of an anxious heart!
Soon must this bough, as you shall fix his doom, Adorn Philander's head, or grace his tomb.""Why, now, do but see how the world is gaping for a wonder!" cries Mr.
Johnson. "I think it is now just forty years ago that a young fellow had a sprig of myrtle given him by a girl he courted, and asked me to write him some verses that he might present her in return. I promised, but forgot;and when he called for his lines at the time agreed on--'Sit still a moment,' says I, 'dear Mund, and I'll fetch them thee,' so stepped aside for five minutes, and wrote the nonsense you now keep such a stir about."Upon revising these anecdotes, it is impossible not to be struck with shame and regret that one treasured no more of them up; but no experience is sufficient to cure the vice of negligence. Whatever one sees constantly, or might see constantly, becomes uninteresting; and we suffer every trivial occupation, every slight amusement, to hinder us from writing down what, indeed, we cannot choose but remember, but what we should wish to recollect with pleasure, unpoisoned by remorse for not remembering more. While I write this, I neglect impressing my mind with the wonders of art and beauties of nature that now surround me; and shall one day, perhaps, think on the hours I might have profitably passed in the Florentine Gallery, and reflecting on Raphael's St. John at that time, as upon Johnson's conversation in this moment, may justly exclaim of the months spent by me most delightfully in Italy--"That I prized every hour that passed by, Beyond all that had pleased me before;But now they are past, and I sigh And I grieve that I prized them no more."SHENSTONE.
Dr. Johnson delighted in his own partiality for Oxford; and one day, at my house, entertained five members of the other University with various instances of the superiority of Oxford, enumerating the gigantic names of many men whom it had produced, with apparent triumph. At last I said to him, "Why, there happens to be no less than five Cambridge men in the room now." "I did not," said he, "think of that till you told me; but the wolf don't count the sheep." When the company were retired, we happened to be talking of Dr. Barnard, the Provost of Eton, who died about that time; and after a long and just eulogium on his wit, his learning, and his goodness of heart, "He was the only man, too," says Mr. Johnson, quite seriously, "that did justice to my good breeding; and you may observe that I am well-bred to a degree of needless scrupulosity. No man," continued he, not observing the amazement of his hearers, "no man is so cautious not to interrupt another; no man thinks it so necessary to appear attentive when others are speaking; no man so steadily refuses preference to himself, or so willingly bestows it on another, as I do; nobody holds so strongly as I do the necessity of ceremony, and the ill effects which follow the breach of it, yet people think me rude; but Barnard did me justice." "'Tis pity,"said I, laughing, "that he had not heard you compliment the Cambridge men after dinner to-day." "Why," replied he, "I was inclined to DOWN them sure enough; but then a fellow DESERVES to be of Oxford that talks so." I have heard him at other times relate how he used so sit in some coffee-house there, and turn M----'s "C-r-ct-c-s" into ridicule for the diversion of himself and of chance comers-in. "The 'Elf-da,'" says he, "was too exquisitely pretty; I could make no fun out of that." When upon some occasions he would express his astonishment that he should have an enemy in the world, while he had been doing nothing but good to his neighbours, I used to make him recollect these circumstances. "Why, child," said he, "what harm could that do the fellow? I always thought very well of M----n for a CAMBRIDGE man; he is, I believe, a mighty blameless character." Such tricks were, however, the more unpardonable in Mr. Johnson, because no one could harangue like him about the difficulty always found in forgiving petty injuries, or in provoking by needless offence. Mr. Jordan, his tutor, had much of his affection, though he despised his want of scholastic learning. "That creature would," said he, "defend his pupils to the last:
