or immoral books and pamphlets, as alfo, original effays and letters to the editors. The chief conductors of it, were, Dr. John Martyn, then a young physician, afterwards profeffor of botany in the university of Cambridge, and Dr. Ruffel, alfo a phyfician; the former affumed the name Bavius, and the latter Mævius. Its first publication was in January, 1730, and it meeting with encouragement, Cave projected an improvement thereon in a pamphlet of his own, and in the following year gave to the world the first number of the Gentleman's Magazine, with a notification that the fame would be continued monthly, incurring thereby a charge of plagiarism, which, as he is faid to have confeffed it, we may fuppofe he did not look upon as criminal *.

Johnson had not by his letter, herein before inserted, fo attached himself to Cave, as not to be at liberty to enter into a closer engagement with any other person : he, therefore, in 1736, made overtures to the Rev. Mr. Budworth, then mafter of the grammar school at Brerewood, in Staffordshire, and who had been bred under Mr. Blackwall, at Market Bosworth, to become his affiftant; but Mr. Budworth thought himfelf under a neceffity of declining them, from an apprehenfion that thofe convulfive motions to which Johnson through life was fubject, might render him an object of imitation, and poffibly of ridicule, with his pupils.

It may be remembered that in a preceding page, Johnson is faid to have refided for fome months, in the year 1734, in the house of a perfon named

Memoirs of the fociety of Grub-street. Preface, page xii. et feqq.

Jarvis,

Jarvis, at Birmingham. To this circumstance, by a conjecture not improbable, may be referred an important event of his life. At that time there dwelt at Birmingham a widow, the relict of Mr. Porter a mercer, who dying, left her, if not well jointured, fo provided for, as made a match with her to a man in Johnson's circumstances defirable: report fays, fhe was rather advanced in years; it is certain that fhe had a fon and daughter grown up; the former was in the last war a captain in the navy, and his fifter, lately dead, inherited from him a handfome fortune, acquired in the course of a long service. Of her perfonal charms little can now be remembered: Johnfon has celebrated them in an infcription on her tomb at Bromley; but, confidering his infirmity, and admitting the truth of a confeffion, faid to have been made by him, that he never faw the ⚫ human face divine,' it may be queftioned, whether himself was ever an eye-witness to them. The infcription further declares her to have been of the family of Jarvis, and gives colour to a fuppofition that he was either a fifter or other relation of the Jarvis above-mentioned.

With this perfon he married, his age being then about twenty-seven. Her fortune, which is conjectured to have been about eight hundred pounds, placed him in a state of affluence, to which before he had been a ftranger. He was not fo imprudent as to think it an inexhaustable mine; on the contrary, he reflected on the means of improving it. His acquifitions at school and at the univerfity, and the improvement he had made of his talents in the study of the French and Italian languages, qualified him, in an eminent degree, for an inftructor of youth in claffical literaVOL. I.

D

ture;

ture; and the reputation of his father, and the con nections he had formed in and about Lichfield, pointed out to him a fair profpect of fucceeding in that useful profeflion.

There dwelt in the above-mentioned city, a very refpectable gentleman, Mr. Gilbert Walmsley, register of the ecclefiaftical court of the bifhop thereof, to whofe house, in his fchool and alfo in his university vacations, Johnson was a welcome gueft: the fame perfon was also a friend of captain Garrick, who had for fome time been refident at Lichfield, and, by con fequence, of Mr. David Garrick, his fon. His cha racter is fo well pourtrayed by Johnson, and represents in fuch lively colours his friendship for him, that it would be injustice to omit the infertion of it, as given

in the life of Edmund Smith:

Of Gilbert Walmsley, thus prefented to my mind, let me indulge myself in the remembrance. I knew him very early; he was one of the first friends that literature procured me; and, I hope that, at least, my gratitude made me worthy of his notice.

He was of an advanced age, and I was only not a boy; yet, he never received my notions with contempt. He was a whig, with all the virulence and malevolence of his party; yet difference of opinion did not keep us apart: I honoured him, and he endured me.

He had mingled with the gay world, without • exemption from its vices or its follies, but had never neglected the cultivation of his mind; his belief of revelation was unfhaken; his learning preserved

с

his principles; he grew first regular, and then pious.

• His ftudies had been fo various, that I am not able to name a man of equal knowledge. His acquaintance with books was great, and what he did not immediately know, he could at least tell where to * find. Such was his amplitude of learning, and fuch his copiousness of communication, that it may be doubted whether a day now paffes, in which I have not fome advantage from his friendship.

* At this man's table I enjoyed many chearful and inftructive hours, with companions, fuch as are not often found; with one who has lengthened, and one who has gladdened life; with Dr. James, whose 'fkill in phyfic will be long remembered; and with David Garrick, whom I hoped to have gratified with this character of our common friend: but what are the hopes of man! I am difappointed by that stroke of death, which has eclipfed the gaiety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure.'

The benevolent perfon, fo gratefully remembered in the above encomium, knowing the abilities of Johnson, encouraged him in his defign of becoming a teacher of literature: he fuggefted to him the taking a large houfe, fituate in a place adjacent to Lichfield; which, however the name of it be fpelt, the common people call Edjal: thither Johnfon went, and with him young Garrick, who, though he had been educated in Lichfield school, and was then near eighteen years old, having been diverted in the course of his studies by a call to Lisbon, stood in need of improvement in the Latin and French languages.

The placing Garrick under the tuition of Johnson, was an act of Mr. Walmsley's, and resembles that

politic device of country house-wives, the placing one egg in the neft of a hen to induce her to lay more: it fucceeded fo far, as to draw from the families of the neighbouring gentry a few pupils, and among the reft, a fon of Mr. Offley, of Staffordshire; a name, that for centuries paft, may be traced in the history and records of that county. But, fo adverse were his fortunes in this early period, that this well-planned scheme of a fettlement difappointed the hopes of Johnson and his friends; for, neither his own abilities, nor the patronage of Mr. Walmsley, nor the exertions of Mrs. Johnson and her relations, fucceeded farther than to produce an acceffion of about five or fix pupils; so that his number, at no time, exceeded eight, and of those not all were boarders.

After waiting a reasonable time in hopes of more pupils, Johnson, finding they came in but flowly, had recourfe to the ufual method of raising a school. In the year, 1736, he advertised the instructing young gentlemen in the Greek and Latin languages, by himself, at his house, describing it near Lichfield.* That this notification failed of its end, we can scarce wonder, if we reflect, that he was little more than twenty-feven years of age when he published it, and that he had not the vanity to profefs teaching all sciences, nor the effrontery of thofe, who, in these more modern times, undertake, in private boarding-fchools to qualify young men for holy orders.

The following is the advertisement which he published upon the occafion :--- At Edial, near Lichfield, in Staffordshire, young ⚫ gentlemen are boarded, and taught the Latin and Greek languages by SAMUEL JOHNSON.' Vide Gent. Mag. for 1736, Page 418.

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