BOOKS•

DR. JOHNSON AND THE FAIR SEX.*

IT may be thought, and not without reason, that no new light can be thrown on a• character so familiar as that of Dr. Johnson. From his own day to the present, before his death, and in the one hundred and eleven years which have succeeded it, Johnson has been probably more talked about and written about, than any other man of letters. He has been viewed, it would seem, from all points. His prejudices, his oddities, his bearish ways, his infinite depth of tenderness, his melancholy, • Doctor Johnson and the Fair Sez : s Stsuly of Contrasts. Bp W. H. Craig, M A. VI ith Port, nits. London : Sampson Low ant Co.

his love of good society, and abounding faculty of talk, all that is weak in him and all that is noble, has employed the

tongues and pens of many of the most distinguished of his countrymen, and not of his countrymen alone. If it be asked what more there can be to say, Mr. Craig has answered the question in a bright little volume, which, although it contains nothing that is not to be found elsewhere, presents one phase

of the Doctor's character in a fuller light. So at least it appears to the present writer, who has read his Boswell through again and again, and many a volume of " John-

soniana," without observing the extent to which Johnson was influenced by the society of women, and what is more re- markable, how strongly be attracted them. It is the degree

of the attraction upon both sides that makes it so significant. Externally, as all the world knows, he had nothing to recom- mend him ; he was scarred in face, he was negligent in dress, many of his habits were grotesque, some of them were extremely repulsive, yet he managed to hold captive some of the most brilliant women in London, and delighted in their society.

"His physical infirmities," says Mr. Craig, " uncouth gestures, and acerbities of temper, only seemed to attract them; for with that wonderful intuition which Heaven has granted women for their guidanoe, they soon divined that purest gold lurked beneath the rough quartz of his outer man. No doubt it was from this conviction that Johnson was petted and fondled and flattered by the women of his time to an extent that probably mortal man never was before or since. Wraxall describes how at the most fashionable assemblies he has seen, upon Dr. Johnson making his appearance, all the the ladies present cluster round him in a circle four or five deep, and how he actually beheld the beau- tiful Duchess of Devonshire —Gainsborough's Duchess—then in the first bloom of youth, hanging on the sentences that fell from Johnson's lips, and contending for the nearest place to his chair.'

Nor was this popularity confined to ladies of rank, note, or culture. A young woman of no particular pretensions once confided to Mr. Peter Garrick, brother of the Garrick, that in her opinion Dr. Johnson was 'a very seducing man.' Further, Bos- well relates in his Tour to the Hebrides, how, when he and Johnson were disporting themselves in that ultima Thule, the simple kindly Scotch dames whom they encountered, actually lavished caresses upon their formidable visitor. Whilst they are in Skye, he re- veals the fact that ' one of our married ladies, a lively pretty little woman, good-humouredly sat down upon Dr. Johnson's knee, and, being encouraged by some of the company, put her hands round his neck and kissed "

Mr. Craig reminds us also how the aged Countess of Eglinton embraced Johnson, calling him her " dear son ; " and he adds that " old and young, gentle and simple, all good women, all

innocent children, were somehow drawn by a mysterious gravitation to the terrible Doctor."

This remarkable aspect of Johnson's character is unnoticed by Carlyle or .Macaulay, and is, as we have said, brought for the first time into prominence by Mr. Craig. His little volume is divided into six sections :—(l) Dr. Johnson as a

Squire of Dames ; (2) as a Suitor ; (3) as a Man of Fashion ; (4) Dr. Johnson on dress and deportment ; (5) Dr. Johnson on marriage, and the relations of the sexes ; and (6) as a Knight- errant.

Johnson bad been very susceptible to the charms of women in his youthful days ; and told Mrs. Thrale years afterwards that an evening he once spent with Molly Aston was not happiness but rapture, and " the thought of it sweetened the whole year." That he should have married a woman twice his age, and who was far from attractive, seems to show a defective taste. Enough that it was, as he said, a love-match, and that she was remembered after death with a tenderness that knew no change. When he had risen to fame, if not to

fortune, in London, he was a lonely widower living a laborious life in gloomy chambers. No man of letters ever

loved society more, or needed it more, for he was a prey to melancholy. To Johnson a tavern - chair was the throne of human felicity, and yet he would leave that chair to be cheered and flattered in London drawing- rooms. And the liking he showed for the conversa- tion of intelligent women was fully shared by them. Mrs.

Thrale would sit up half the night pouring out cup after cup of the beverage which John Wesley thought so pernicious. The " Blue-stockings "—Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Yesey, Mrs. Ord, and " the accomplished Mrs. Boscawen "—welcomed him

as their guest. The learned Mrs. Carter, who knew many languages, " who had also the feminine merits of being a good needle-woman and could make a pudding as well as translate Epictetus," was his friend for nearly fifty years; Mrs. Chapone, who lives in Vanity Fair, was another of his intimate associates ; so was Kitty Clive, who said that she loved to sit by Dr. Johnson, as he always entertained her. Then there was Mrs. Fitzherbert, who " had the best understanding he ever met with in any human being ; " and Miss Reynolds- " Renny, dear "—sister of the great Sir Joshua; and Mrs. Knowles, the Quaker, with whom he had many a friendly controversy ; and the famous Mrs. Macaulay, with whose History or England, in eight volumes, we are of course all familiar ; and Mrs. Lennox, whose Female Quixote may be, as Mr. Craig says, " decidedly clever," but is decidedly a little wearisome; and Lady Lucan, at whose house Boswell says "he found hospitality united with extraordinary accomplish- ments, and embellished with charms of which no man could be insensible."

Yet Johnson, although he prided himself on his good breeding, was often overbearing, would sometimes break out with ungovernable fury, astonishing, as it bas been observed, "the well-regulated minds of respectable ladies and gentle- men." That he should have found solace in female society is not surprising, but that women should have been so fond of his may be thought curious, for he never spared them, and frequently expressed something like contempt for their intellectual capacity. He declared that they were the slaves of fashion, and made many other comments by no means polite to the sex. Bnt Johnson did not always mean what he said, and when it pleased him no man could pay a compliment more gracefully. Nothing can be more happy than his saying to Mrs. Siddons when for the moment he had no chair to offer her : " Madam, you who so often occasion a want of seats to other people will more easily excuse the want of one yourself," or his compliment, though we may suspect its truthfulness, to Mrs. Sheridan on her Memoirs of Miss Sydney Biddulph. "I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much." Dearly did he like a little flattery in return, and when in his old age he heard the opinion of a Countess that to be praised by Doctor Johnson " would make one a fool all his life," he said, " I am too old to be made a fool, but if you say I am made a fool I shall not deny it. I am much pleased with a compliment, especially from a pretty woman." It was one of Johnson's peculiarities that, while dressing like a sloven, he considered himself an infallible judge of what ladies ought to wear. "No milliner of Bond Street," says Mr. Craik, "could be more critical to detect the displace- ment of a ribbon, the want of modishness in a cap, or inharmonious colouring in a dress." He lectured Mrs. Thrale on the subject, and he lectured her friends, and induced one of them, who was dressed for church, not only to change her hat and gown, but also to thank him for his reproof. " It seems," says Fanny Burney, "that he always speaks his mind concerning the dress of ladies, and all ladies who are here obey his injunctions implicitly, and alter whatever he dis- approves." This was written at Streatham ; but Mrs. Thrale's guests were not always able to satisfy the fastidious Doctor. One young lady, whose cap Johnson called vile, failed to win his approval when she had changed it. Fanny's own cap was pronounced very handsome, but her mother had to change her gown because it did not meet with his approval, and was then told that she should not wear a black hat and cloak in summer.

Mr. Craig does not forget Johnson's noble conduct and gentle manners to women who were neither fair nor young, and to whom, because they were afflicted, he gave a home under his roof. When we think of the wretched woman he carried home upon his back and saved from death or from a life of misery, of Mrs. Williams, blind and peevish, of Mrs. Desmoulins and her daughter, and of Miss Carmichael, all of whom lived on his bounty, and "made his life miserable from the impossibility he found in making them happy,"—all this great man's failings sink into insignificance in the presence of a charity so divine. We can even forgive his criticisms of Milton and of Gray. " It was the nature of the man," says Mr. Craik, " to stand by the weak and suffering in their affliction, to give them love and comfort, when others would have avoided their nnlively companionship." Dr. Johnson and the Fair Sex will attract all readers interested in the subject. The tone of the little work is excellent, and praise must be given to the tasteful way in which the volume is brought out.