care that the powers of my mind may not be debilitated by poverty, and that indigence do not force me into any criminal act.'
Johnson was so far fortunate, that the respectable character of his parents, and his own merit, had, from his earliest years, secured him a kind reception in the best families at Lichfield. Among these I can mention Mr. Howard[1], Dr. Swinfen, Mr. Simpson, Mr. Levett[2] Captain Garrick, father of the great ornament of the British stage; but above all, Mr. Gilbert Walmsley[3], Register of the Prerogative Court of Lichfield, whose character, long after his decease, Dr. Johnson has, in his Life of Edmund Smith[4] thus drawn in the glowing colours of gratitude:
'Of Gilbert Walmsley[5], thus presented to my mind, let me indulge myself in the remembrance. 1 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
- ↑ Johnson, in a letter to Dr. Taylor, dated Aug. i8, 1763, advised him, in some trouble that he had with his wife, 'to consult our old friend Mr. Howard. His profession has acquainted him with matrimonial law, and he is in himself a cool and wise man.' Notes and Queries, 6th S. V. 342. See Post, March 20, 1778, for mention of his son.
- ↑ See Post, Dec. 1. 1743, note. Robert Levett, made famous by Johnson's lines (Post, Jan. 20, 1782), was not of this family.
- ↑ Mr. Warton informs me, 'that this early friend of Johnson was entered a Commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, aged seventeen, in 1698; and is the authour of many Latin verse translations in the Gent. Mag, (vol. XV. 102). One of them is a translation of
'My time, O ye Muses, was happily spent,' &c.
He died Aug. 3, 1751, and a monument to his memory has been erected in the Cathedral of Lichfield, with an inscription written by Mr. Seward, one of the Prebendaries. Boswell.
- ↑ Johnson's Works, vii. 380.
- ↑ See Post, 1780, note at end of Mr, Langton's 'Collection.'
mind.
