Mrs. Thrale, when she was talking with him, one day in July 1773, of the events of his youth. "Goldsmith, no doubt," she replied, "and he will do it the best among us." "No, Goldy won't do," Johnson thinks; and they talk together of Dr. Taylor of Ashborne, and other old friends of Johnson, who know his life and love him better. "After my coming to London," he said, "to drive the world about a little, you must all go to Jack Hawkesworth for anecdotes. I lived in great familiarity with him, though I think there was not much affection, from the year 1753 till the time Mr. Thrale and you took me up. I intend, however," he continued, "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."
The journey of Boswell and Johnson to the Hebrides took place in the autumn of 1773, and it was in Skye that he wrote the graceful Latin ode to Mrs. Thrale, consisting of five stanzas, which ends thus:—
Seu viri curas, pia nupta, mulcet,
Seu fovet mater sobolem benigna,
Sive cum libris novitate pascit Sedula mentem;
Sit memor nostri, fideique merces
Stet fides constans, meritoque blandum
Thraliæ discant resonare nomen Littora Skiæ.
The following is a literal translation of the entire ode:—
I am roaming through lands where the barren rock mingles its stony ruins with the clouds; where the savage country laughs at the unfruitful labours of the peasant.
I am wandering among races of uncultivated men; where life, adorned by no culture, is neglected and deformed, and, foul with the smoke of peat, lurks obscure.
Amid the hardships of this long tour, amid the babble of an unknown tongue, in how many strains do I ask myself, "How fares sweet Thrale?"
Whether she, dutiful spouse, soothes her husband's cares, or whether, indulgent mother, she fondles her offspring, or whether, amid the society of books, she nourishes her mind with new knowledge;
May she be mindful of me! May faith, the reward of faith, remain constant! And may the shores of Skye learn to resound the name of Thrale so justly dear.[1]
While her name was resounding thus eloquently among the mountains of the Celt, Mrs. Thrale herself was hard at work in the counting-house of the brewery, and superintending the conduct of her Welsh estates. Mr. Perkins, head clerk, was away on a commercial journey, and to him she wrote: "Mr. Thrale is still upon his little tour. I opened a letter from you at the counting-house this morning, and am sorry to find you have so much trouble with Grant and his affairs. . . . Careless, of the 'Blue Posts,' has turned refractory, and applied to Hoare's people, who have sent him in their been I called on him to-day, however, and by dint of an unwearied solicitation (for I kept him at the coach-side a full half-hour) I got his order for six butts more as the final trial."
It was a terrible disappointment to this energetic little woman of business to discover, upon the death, in 1773, of her uncle, Sir Thomas Salusbury, that he had bequeathed Offley Place and its 2,000l. a year of revenue to a distant relative, thus depriving her of what she had hitherto regarded as her inheritance. And the blow fell with peculiar heaviness now, when she would so gladly have brought some grist of her own to the mill.
In 1774 Johnson spent some weeks at Streatham, "to be nursed;" and in the autumn of that year he accompanied the Thrales and their eldest child, Hester, whom they called "Queeney," upon a tour in Wales, where they visited various Welsh relations, and looked up Bachygraig, the family mansion of Mrs. Thrale's father. They found a ruined house, two hundred years old, and no garden. Johnson had dreamt of something finer, and was disappointed. Mrs. Thrale was equally disappointed on this occasion in Johnson. He was eminently a poor traveller, short-sighted and deaf, and could not believe in beauties which he neither heard nor saw. His irritable temper was also a sore trial to his travelling-companions. "I remember, sir," said Mrs. Thrale long afterwards, when the talk one evening at Streatham was of Johnson's severe and bitter speeches, "I remember, sir, when we were travelling in Wales, how you called me to account for my civility to the people. 'Madam,' you said, 'let me have no more of this idle commendation of nothing. Why is it that whatever you see, and whoever you see, you are to be so indiscriminately lavish of praise?' 'Why, I'll tell you, sir,' said I: 'when I am with you and Mr. Thrale and Queeney, I am obliged to be civil for four.'"
Nor was it only in Wales that the in-
- ↑ More than forty years after this ode was written Sir Walter Scott visited Skye with a party of friends, and had the curiosity to ask "what was the first idea in every one's mind at landing." All answered, separately, that it was Johnson's Latin ode.
