the Universal Chronicle. Of these Essays, he
was supplied with Nos. 33, 93, and 96, by Thomas Warton; with No. 67 by
Langton, and with Nos. 76, 79, and 82 by Reynolds. Boswell mentions
twelve papers being given by his friends, but does not say who were the
contributors of the remaining five. The Essay on Epitaphs, the
Dissertation on Pope's Epitaphs, and an Essay on the Bravery of the
English common Soldiers, were subjoined to this paper, when it was
collected into volumes. It does not differ from the Rambler, otherwise
than as the essays are shorter, and somewhat less grave and elaborate.

Another wound was inflicted on him by the death of his mother, who had
however reached her ninetieth year. His affection and his regret will
best appear from the following letter to the daughter of his deceased
wife.

  _To Miss Porter, in Lichfield_.

  You will conceive my sorrow for the loss of my mother, of the best
  mother. If she were to live again, surely I should behave better to
  her.
  But she is happy, and what is past is nothing to her: and, for me,
  since I cannot repair my faults to her, I hope repentance will efface
  them. I return you, and all those that have been good to her, my
  sincerest thanks, and pray God to repay you all with infinite
  advantage. Write to me, and comfort me, dear child. I shall be glad
  likewise, if Kitty will write to me. I shall send a bill of twenty
  pounds in a few days, which I thought to have brought to my mother,
  but God suffered it not. I have not power nor composure to say much
  more. God bless you, and bless us all.

  I am, dear Miss,

  Your affectionate humble servant,

  SAM. JOHNSON.

Her attention to his mother, as it is reported in the following words,
by Miss Seward, ensured to Johnson the sympathy of Lucy Porter.

From the age of twenty till her fortieth year, when affluence came to
her by the death of her eldest brother, she had boarded in Lichfield
with Dr. Johnson's mother, who still kept that little bookseller's shop,
by which her husband had supplied the scanty means of existence.
Meanwhile, Lucy Porter kept the best company of our little city, but
would make no engagement on market-days, lest Granny, as she called Mrs.
Johnson, should catch cold by serving in the shop. There Lucy Porter
took her place, standing behind the counter, nor thought it a disgrace
to thank a poor person who purchased from her a penny battledore [10].

To defray the expenses of his mother's funeral, he had recourse to his
pen; and, in the evenings of one week produced the Rasselas, for which
he received one hundred pounds, and was presented by the purchasers with
twenty-five more on its reaching a second edition. Rasselas is a noble
monument of the genius of its author. Reflections so profound, and so
forcible a draught of some of the great outlines of the human intellect
and passions, are to be found in few writers of any age or country. The
mind is seldom presented with any thing so marvellous as the character
of the philosopher, who has persuaded himself that he is entrusted with
the management of the elements. Johnson's dread of insanity was,
perhaps, relieved by embodying this mighty conception. He had seen the
shadowy form in the twilight, and might have dissipated or eased his
apprehensions by coming up to it more closely, and examining into the
occasion of his fears. In this tale, the censure which he has elsewhere
passed on Milton, that he is a lion who has no skill in dandling the
kid, recoils upon himself. His delineation of the female character is
wanting in delicacy.

In this year he supplied Mr. Newbery with an Introduction to the World
Displayed, a Collection of Voyages and Travels: till the publication of
his Shakspeare, in 1765, the only writings acknowledged by himself were
a Review of Tytler's Vindication of Mary Queen of Scots, in the
Gentleman's Magazine; an Introduction to the Proceedings of the
Committee for Clothing the French Prisoners; the Preface to Bolt's
Dictionary of Trade and Commerce; a Dedication to the King, of Kennedy's
Complete System of Astronomical Chronology, unfolding the Scriptures;
and a Dedication to the Queen, of Hoole's Tasso.

In the course of this period, he made a short visit to Lichfield, and
thus communicates his feelings on the occasion, in a letter dated July
20, 1762, to Baretti, his Italian friend, who was then at Milan.

  Last winter I went down to my native town, where I found the streets
  much narrower and shorter than I thought I had left them, inhabited by
  a new race of people, to whom I was very little known. My play-fellows
  were grown old, and forced me to suspect that I am no longer young. My
  only remaining friend had changed his principles, and was become the
  tool of the predominant faction. My daughter-in-law, from whom I
  expected most, and whom I met with sincere benevolence, had lost the
  beauty and gaiety of youth, without having gained much of the wisdom
  of age. I wandered about for five days, and took the first convenient
  opportunity of returning to a place, where, if there is not much
  happiness, there is at least such a diversity of good and evil, that
  slight vexations do not fix upon the heart.

  I think in a few weeks to try another excursion; though to what end?
  Let me know, my Baretti, what has been the result of your return to
  your own country; whether time has made any alteration for the better,
  and, whether, when the first rapture of salutation was over, you did
  not find your thoughts confessed their disappointment.

Henceforward Johnson had no longer to struggle with the evils of
extreme poverty. A pension of Ј300 was granted to him, in 1762, by His
Majesty. Before his acceptance of it, in answer to a question put by him
to the Earl of Bute, in these words, "Pray, my Lord, what am I to do for
the pension?" he was assured by that nobleman that it was not given him
for any thing he was to do, but for what he had done. The definition he
had given of the word pension, in his dictionary, that in England it was
generally understood to mean pay, given to a state hireling, for treason
to his country, raised some further scruples whether he ought himself to
become a pensioner; but they were removed by the arguments, or the
persuasion of Mr. Reynolds, to whom he had recourse for advice in this
dilemma. What advice Reynolds would give him he must have known pretty
well before-hand; but this was one of the many instances in which men,
having first determined how to act, are willing to imagine that they are
going for clearer information, where they in truth expect nothing but a
confirmation of their own resolve. The liberality of the nation could
not have been extended to one who had better deserved it. But he had a
calamity yet more dreadful than poverty to encounter. The depression of
his spirits was now become almost intolerable. "I would have a limb
amputated," said he to Dr. Adams, "to recover my spirits." He was
constantly tormented by harassing reflections on his inability to keep
the many resolutions he had formed of leading a better life; and
complained that a kind of strange oblivion had overspread him, so that
he did not know what was become of the past year, and that incidents and
intelligence passed over him without leaving any impression.

Neither change of place nor the society of friends availed to prevent or
to dissipate this melancholy. In 1762, he made an excursion into
Devonshire, with Sir Joshua Reynolds; the next year he went to Harwich,
with Boswell; in the following, when his malady was most troublesome,
the meeting which acquired the name of the Literary Club was instituted,
and he passed a considerable time in Lincolnshire, with the father of
Langton; and, in the year after, visited Cambridge, in the company of
Beauclerk. Of the Literary Club, first proposed by Reynolds, the other
members at its first establishment were Burke, Dr. Nugent, Beauclerk,
Langton, Goldsmith, Chamier, and Sir John Hawkins. They met at the
Turk's Head, in Gerrard-street, Soho, one evening in the week, and
usually remained together till a late hour. The society was afterwards
extended, so as to comprise a large number of those who were most
eminent, either for their learning or their station in life, and the
place of meeting has been since at different times changed to other
parts of the town, nearer to the Parliament House, or to the usual
resorts of gaiety. A club was the delight of Johnson. We lose some of
our awe for him, when we contemplate him as mimicked by his old scholar
Garrick, in the act of squeezing a lemon into the punch-bowl, and
asking, as he looks round the company, in his provincial accent, of
which he never got entirely rid, "Who's for _poonch_?" If there was any
thing likely to gratify him more than a new club, it was the public
testimony of respect from a learned body; and this he received from
Trinity College, Dublin, in a diploma for the degree of Doctor of Laws,
an honour the more flattering, as it came without solicitation.

At the beginning of 1766, his faithful biographer, James Boswell, who
had known him for three years, found him in a good house in Johnson's
court, Fleet-street, to which he had removed from lodgings in the
Temple. By the advice of his physician, he had now begun to abstain from
wine, and drank only water or lemonade. He had brought two companions
into his new dwelling, such as few other men would have chosen to
enliven their solitude. On the ground floor was Miss Anna Williams,
daughter of Zechariah Williams, a man who had practised physic in Wales,
and, having come to England to seek the reward proposed by Parliament
for the discovery of the longitude, had been assisted by Johnson in
drawing up an account of the method he had devised. This plan was
printed with an Italian translation, which is supposed to be Baretti's,
on the opposite page; and a copy of the pamphlet, presented by Johnson
to the Bodleian, is deposited in that library. Miss Williams had been a
frequent visitor at Johnson's before the death of his wife, and having
after that event, come under his roof to undergo an operation for a
cataract on her eyes with more convenience than could have been had in
her own lodgings, continued to occupy an apartment in his house,
whenever he had one, till the time of her death. Her disease ended in
total blindness, which gave her an additional claim on his benevolence.
When he lived in the Temple, it was his custom, however late the hour,
not to retire to rest until he had drunk tea with her in her lodgings in
Bolt-court. One night when Goldsmith and Boswell were with him,
Goldsmith strutted off in the company of Johnson, exclaiming with an air
of superiority, "I go to Miss Williams," while Boswell slunk away in
silent disappointment; but it was not long, as Boswell adds, before he
himself obtained the same mark of distinction. Johnson prevailed on
Garrick to get her a benefit at the playhouse, and assisted her in
preparing some poems she had written for the press, by both which means
she obtained the sum of about Ј300. The interest of this, added to some
small annual benefactions, probably hindered her from being any
pecuniary burden to Johnson; and though she was apt to be peevish and
impatient, her curiosity, the retentiveness of her memory, and the
strength of her intellect, made her, on the whole, an agreeable
companion to him. The other inmate, whose place was in one of his
garrets, was Robert Levett, a practiser of physic among the lower
people, grotesque in his appearance, formal in his manners, and silent
before company: though little thought of by others, this man was so
highly esteemed for his abilities by Johnson, that he was heard to say,
he should not be satisfied though attended by all the College of
Physicians, unless he had Levett with him. He must have been a useful
assistant in the chemical processes with which Johnson was fond of
amusing himself; and at one of which Murphy, on