THE HOUSE IN GOUGH SQUARE.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1102, 15 April 1911, Page 4

THE HOUSE IN GOUGH SQUARE.

Dr. Samuel Johnson's house in Gough Square, London, having boen presented to the nation by Mr. Cecil Harmsworth, will no doubt become a placo of even more frequent pilgrimage than it now is. It must follow that people will have Johnson's name oftener on their lips, will ■ oftener call up his mental picture and read more in his books and in the books about him. Among the host of imaginary friends who are to be found in books few are at once so stimulating, so amusing, and so consoling as the sometime tonant of the old plain house in Gough Square. Mr. Harmswobth's gift will be a means of adding new recruits to the Johnsonian company, and .a world-wide gratitude should bo his reward. Some of the most memorable events of Johnson's life happened during his ten years in Gough Square. It was there that ho did most of the work on his Dictionary, and he was still living there when it was published. His staff of copyists worked in an upper room fitted like a counting-house. The tasks which he could not delegate to others were probably performed in the garret to which he once invited Dβ. Burney. There the visitor found "about five or six Greek folios, a deal writing table, and a chair and a half. Johnson, giving to his guest ths entire seat, tottered himself on one with only three legs and one arm." He received £1750 for the Dictionary, and most of that sum was absorbsd in the expenses of compilation. The money was paid to the author in instalments, and was all spent by him before the book was published. He continued to be in pecuniary difficulties, and about a year after the Dictionary was published he was arrested for debt. Meanwhile, Bos well tells us "the world contemplated with wonder so stupendous a work achieved by one man, while other countries had thought such undertakings fit only for whole academics." Johnson's Dictionary has, of course, been long superseded, but it remains as a landmark in literary history. Its memory is also kept alive by the noble prose of the Preface and the Letter to Lord Chesterfield. The famous Letter was the result of Lord Chesterfield's belated attempt to patronise the struggling author, whom he had before studiously neglected. "The notice you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind," wrote Johnson in words that still seem to breathe his indignation; "but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary and cannot impart it; till I am known and do not want it." Johnson's feeling of solitariness was due [ to the death of his wife, which occurred not long after ho went to live I in Gough Square. Ho always remembered the anniversary of the sad event, noting on one such occasion that he "prayed for her conditionally, if it were lawful." But one so sociable and so averse to being alone was bound to gather companions around him. He formed his first club in Ivy Lane, Paternoster Row, and ho began to make his house a home for unfortunate friends, such as old, blind Mrs. Williams and Robert Levett, the indigent physician, whose skill Johnson, out of pure friendship, persisted in over-praising. Reynolds, Garrick, Langton, and Beauclerk were already among his frequent visitors. Hio faithful black servant, Francis Barber came to him during this per-1

iod. He always had dependents, and at this time, though he had very little money for himself, ho used to send soma to one of those who had worked for him as an amanuensis. Another literary event of the Gough Square decade was the publication of Johnson's Vanilij of Human Wishes. The lino enumerating the ills of the scholar's life—"Toil, envy, want, the garret, and the jail," was a transcription, except as to the jail, from his own experience. After his disappointment with Lord Chesterfield he struck out "garret" and wrote "patron." In the same year (1749) his long-forgotten tragedy, Irene, was acted at Drury Lane, but even Garmck could not make it please the public. Boswell relates that when Johnson was asked "how he felt upon the ill-success of his tragedy, he replied, 'Like the Monument,' meaning that he continued firm and unmoved as that column." When the play was first produced, the author, by way of supporting his new character of a dramatist, discarded his familiar brown suit and appeared at the theatre "in a scarlet waistcoat with rich gold lace and a gold-laced hat." The Rambler was also composed at Gough Square, many of its "grave and moral discourses" being written # in haste (doubtless while the printer's messenger waited), and not even read over by the author before they were printed. He also worked upon his edition of Shakespeare, began the Idler, and wrote in defence of tea "against Me. Jonas Hanway's violent attack upon that elegant and popular beverage." The Dictionary was finished in 1755, three years before Johnson left Gough Square. The Preface shows him in one of his most melancholy moods: "I may surely be contented without the praise of perfection, which if I could obtain in this gloom of solitude what would it avail mo , ! I have protracted my labours till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave; and success and miscarriage are empty sounds. ,; Yet Boswell could record: "It pleased God to grant him almost thirty years of life after this time; and once, when he was in a placid frame of mind, he was obliged to own to me that he had enjoyed happier days and had many more friends after that gloomy hour than before." Those later friends included Boswell himself and the. hospitable Thrales. His journey to the Hebrides was yet to come, and the Lives of the Poets were still unwritten. The highest university honours, and the favour of his Sovereign were yet to bo conferred upon him, and he was to be acclaimed on all sides as the chief of wits and "Literary Dictator."