The Town: Its Memorable Characters and EventsHunt, Leigh
History
The Town: Its Memorable Characters and Events
Hunt, Leigh
London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- History
Johnson was probably in every tavern and coffee-house in Fleet Street.
There is one which has taken his name, being styled, _par excellence_,
"Doctor Johnson's Coffee-house." But the house he most frequented was
the Mitre tavern, on the other side of the street, in a passage
leading to the Temple. It was here, as we have seen, that he took his
two innocent theologians, and paternally dandled them out of their
misgivings on his knee. The same place was the first of the kind in
which Boswell met him. "We had a good supper," says the happy
biographer, "and port wine, of which he then sometimes drank a
bottle." (At intervals he abstained from all fermented liquors for a
long time.) "The orthodox, high-church sound of the Mitre, the figure
and manner of the celebrated Samuel Johnson, the extraordinary power
and precision of his conversation, and the pride arising from finding
myself admitted as his companion, produced a variety of sensations,
and a pleasing elevation of mind beyond what I had before
experienced."[120] They sat till between one and two in the morning.
He told Boswell at that period that "he generally went abroad at about
four in the afternoon, and seldom came home till two in the morning. I
took the liberty to ask if he did not think it wrong to live thus, and
not to make more use of his great talents. He owned it was a bad
habit."
The next time, Goldsmith was with them, when Johnson made a remark
which comes home to everybody, namely, that granting knowledge in some
cases to produce unhappiness, "knowledge _per se_ was an object which
every one would _wish_ to attain, though, perhaps, he might not take
the trouble necessary for attaining it." One of his most curious
remarks followed, occasioned by the mention of Campbell, the author
of the _Hermippus Redivivus_, on which Boswell makes a no less curious
comment. "Campbell," said Johnson, "is a good man, a pious man. I am
afraid he has not been in the inside of a church for many years; but
he never passes a church without pulling off his hat. This shows that
he has good principles." On which, says Boswell in a note, "I am
inclined to think he was misinformed as to this circumstance. I own I
am jealous for my worthy friend Dr. John Campbell. For though _Milton_
could without remorse absent himself from public worship, _I_
cannot."[121]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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