XLVI. Dr. Johnson to a young Clergyman, a Fellow of a College in Cambridge. DEAR SIR, Bolt-court, Aug. 30, 1780. NOT many days days ago Dr. Lawrance shewed me a letter, in which you make mention of me; I hope, therefore, you will not be displeased that I endeavour to preserve your good-will by some observations which your letter suggested to me. You are afraid of falling into some improprieties in the daily service, by reading to an audience that requires no exactness. Your fear, I hope, secures you from danger. They who contract absurd habits are such as have no fear. It is impossible to do the same thing very often without some peculiarity of manner; but that manner may be good or bad, and a little care will at least preserve it from being bad; to make it very good, there must, I think, be something of natural or casual felicity, which cannot be taught. Your present method of making your sermons seems very judicious. Few frequent preachers can be supposed to have sermons more their own than your's will be. Take care to register somewhere or other the authors from whom your several discourses are borrowed, and do not imagine that you shall always remember even what perhaps you now think it impossible to forget. My advice, however, is, that you attempt from time to time an original sermon, and in the labour of composition do not burden your mind with too much at once; do not exact from yourself, at one effort of excogitation, propriety of thought and elegance of expression. Invent first, and then embellish. The production of something, where nothing was before, is an act of greater energy than the expansion or decoration of the thing produced. Set down diligently your thoughts, as they rise, in the first words that occur, and when you have matter, you will easily give it form; nor perhaps will this method be always necessary; for by habit your thoughts and diction will flow together. The composition of sermons is not very difficult: the divisions not only help the memory of the hearer, but direct the judgment of the writer; they supply sources of invention, and keep every part in its proper place. What I like least in your letter is your account of the manners of your parish; from which I gather, that it has been long neglected by the parson. The Dean of Carlisle, who was then a little rector in Northamptonshire, told me that it might be discerned whether or no there was a clergyman resident in the parish, by the civil or savage manners of the people. Such a congregation as yours stands in much need of reformation; and I would not have you think it impossible to reform them. A very savage parish was civilised by a decayed gentlewoman, who came among them to teach a petty school. My learned friend, Dr. Wheeler, of Oxford, when he was a young man, had the care of a neighbouring parish for fifteen pounds a year, which he was never paid; but he counted it a convenience that it compelled him to make a sermon weekly. One woman he could not bring to the communion; and, when he reproved or exhorted her, she only answered that she was no scholar, He was advised to set some good woman or man of the parish, a little wiser than herself, to talk to her in language level to her mind. Such honest, I may call them holy, artifices, must be practised by every clergyman, for all means must be tried by which souls may be saved. Talk to your people, however, as much as you can, and you will find, that the more frequently you converse with them upon religious subjects, the more willingly they will attend, and the more submissively they will learn. A clergyman's diligence always makes him venerable. I think I have now only to say, that in the momentous work you have undertaken, I pray God to bless you. I am, Sir, 1785, May. Your most humble servant, XLVII. Dr. Johnson to Warren Hastings, Esq. Governor-General in Bengal. SIR, Jan. 9, 1781. AMIDST the importance and multiplicity of affairs in which your great office engages you, I take the liberty of recalling your attention for a moment to literature, and will not prolong the interruption by an apology, which your character makes needless. * Dr. Percy. Mr. Hoole, a gentleman long known and long esteemed in the India-house, after having translated Tasso, has undertaken Ariosto. How well he is qualified for his undertaking he has already shewn. He is desirous, Sir, of your fayour in promoting his proposals, and flatters me by suppos ing that my testimony may advance his interest. It is a new thing for a clerk of the India-house to translate poets-it is new for a governor of Bengal to patronize learning. That he may find his ingenuity rewarded, and that learning may flourish under your protection, is the wish of, 1785, June. Sir, your most humble servant, SAM. JOHNSON, XLVIII. Letters from Dr. Johnson and Dr. Adams. Dr. Johnson to Mr. J. Elphinstone. DEAR SIR, Sept. 25, 1750, YOU have, as I find by every kind of evidence, lost an excellent mother, and I hope you will not think me incapable of partaking of your grief. I have a mother now 82 years of age, whom therefore I must soon lose, unless it please God that she rather should mourn for me. I read the letters in which you relate your mother's death to Mrs. Straham*; and I think I do myself honour, when I tell you, that I read them with tears. But tears are neither to me, nor to you, of any farther use, when once the tribute of nature has been paid. The business of life summons us away from useless grief, and calls us to the exercise of those vir tues of which we are lamenting our deprivation. The greatest benefit which one friend can confer upon another is, to guard, for so surely it must be, and incite, and elevate, his virtues. This your mother will still perform, if you ligently preserve the memory of her life, and of her death; a life, so far as I can learn, useful, wise, and innocent; and a death, resigned, peaceful, and holy. I cannot forbear to mention, that neither reason nor revelation denies you to hope, that you may increase her happiness, by obeying her precepts; and that she may, in her present state, look with pleasure upon every act of virtue, to which her instructions and example have contributed. Whether this be more than * Sister to Mr. Elphinstone, di a pleasing dream, or a just opinion of separate spirits, is indeed of no great importance to us, when we consider ourselves as acting under the eye of God; yet surely there is something pleasing in the belief, that our separation from those whom we love is merely corporeal; and it may be a great incitement to virtuous friendship, if it can be made probable, that that union has received the divine approbation, and shall continue to eternity. There is one expedient by which you may, in some degree, continue her presence. If you write down minutely what you can remember of her from your earliest years, you will read it with great pleasure, and receive from it many hints of soothing recollection when time shall remove her yet farther from you, and your grief shall be matured to veneration. To this, however painful for the present, I cannot but advise you as to a source of comfort and satisfaction in the time to come; for all comfort and all satisfaction is sincerely wished you by, dear Sir, yours, &c. IN MR. URBAN, SAMUEL JOHNSON. Oxford, Oct. 22, 1785. your last month's Review of Books you have asserted, "that the publication of Dr. Johnson's Prayers and Meditations appears to have been at the instance of Dr. Adams, Master of Pembroke College, in Oxford." This is more than I think you are warranted by the Editor's Preface* to say; and is so far from being true, that Dr. Adams never saw a line of these compositions before they appeared in print, nor ever heard from Dr. Johnson, or the Editor, that any such existed. Had he been consulted about the publication, he would certainly have given his voice against it: and he therefore hopes that you will clear him, in as public a manner as you can, from being any way accessary to it. 1785, Oct. W. ADAMS. *The words of the Preface, which led to the supposition, are, “Being last summer on a visit at Oxford, to the Rev. Mr. Adams, (Master of Pembroke College, at which Dr. Johnson received part of his education,) and that gentleman urging him repeatedly to engage in some work of this kind, he then first conceived a design to revise these pious effusions, and bequeath them, with enlargements, to the use and benefit of others." EDIT, XLIX. Letters to and from Dr. Johnson, on Suicide. MR. URBAN, Bath, Feb. 14. As a very dangerous misconstruction of a passage in a work of the late Dr. Johnson appears to have been made by some persons; and though the Doctor kindly condescended to correct the error, through the same channel that the remark was first intended to be conveyed to him; yet as the misconstruction arising from a book may long survive the explanation contained in a newspaper, I beg leave, through your lasting Repository, in justice to the character of a most worthy man, to perpetuate the Doctor's Vindication of himself, as well as to communicate to the world the steps which led to it. Yours, &c. LETTER I. A. B. SIR, Bath, May 4, 1782. CONSCIOUS of the motive from which I write, and trusting that it will readily and clearly appear; I shall leave it to plead my excuse for the trouble I may hereby give you. Without farther preface, therefore, I take the liberty to inform you, that, in the Morning Chronicle of Dec. 12 last, a person, in the character of a master of an academy, recommended the "Beauties of your Writings," a book published last year, to all persons who have the care of youth, as well calculated to convey at once both pleasure and instruction, particularly to young minds. However, he pointed out one passage in it, under the article Death, which, he said, is supposed by some readers to recommend suicide; but knowing your principles too well to join in this opinion, he hoped you would favour the public, through the channel of the same paper, with an explanation, which might effectually remove so erroneous an idea. The passage is as follows: "To die, is the fate of man; but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly." Pos I confess, I have joined in the wish of the letter-writer, but have not had the pleasure of seeing it gratified. sibly the letter has not come to your knowledge, and therefore I take this method of acquainting you with it; or probably the passage, when taken with the context, loses its exceptionable appearance. I own, I do not recollect my |