Piozzi, [née Salusbury; other married name Thrale] Hester Lynch (1741-1821)

Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson

London

T. Cadell

1786

"Remember (continued he) that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad: the mind stagnates for want of employment, grows morbid, and is extinguished like a candle in foul air."

With advising others to be charitable however, Dr. Johnson did not content himfelf. He gave away all he had, and all he ever had gotten, except the two thousand pounds he left behind; and the very small portion of his income which he spent on himself, with all our calculation, we never could make more than seventy, or at most fourscore pounds a year, and he pretended to allow himself a hundred. He had numberless dependents out of doors as well as in, "who, as he expressed it, did not like to see him latterly unless he brought 'em money." For those people he used frequently to raise contributions on his richer friends ; " and this (says he) is [End Page 105] one of the thoufand reasons which ought to restrain a man from drony solitude and useless retirement. Solitude (added he one day) is dangerous to reason, without being favourable to virtue: pleasures of some sort are necessary to the intellectual as to the corporeal health; and those who resist gaiety, will be likely for the most part to fall a sacrifice to appetite; for the solicitations of senfe are always at hand, and a dram to a vacant and solitary perfon is a speedy and seducing relief. Remember (continued he) that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad: the mind stagnates for want of employment, grows morbid, and is extinguished like a candle in foul air." It was on this principle that Johnfon encouraged parents to carry their daughters early and much into company: "for what harm can be done before so many witnesses ? Solitude is the sureft nurse of all prurient passions, [End Page 106] and a girl in the hurry of preparation, or tumult of gaiety, has neither inclination nor leisure to let tender expressions soften or sink into her heart. The ball, the show, are not the dangerous places: no, 'tis the private friend, the kind consoler, the companion of the easy vacant hour, whose compliance with her opinions can flatter her vanity, and whose conversation can just sooth, without ever stretching her mind, that is the lover to be feared: he who buzzes in her ear at court, or at the opera, must be contented to buzz in vain." These notions Dr. Johnson carried so very far, that I have heard him say, "if you would shut up any man with any woman, so as to make them derive their whole pleasure from each other, they would inevitably fall in love, as it is called, with each other; but at six months end if you would throw them both into public life where they might change partners at pleasure, each would soon forget that fondness [End Page 107] which mutual dependance, and the paucity of general amusement alone, had caused, and each would separately feel delighted by their release."
(pp. 105-8)

Light::Candle::Extinguishing

Reading Watt's The Rise of the Novel (88)

5 entries (1786).

Hester Lynch Piozzi, Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, L.L.D. During the Last Twenty Years of his Life (London: T. Cadell, 1786). <Link to ESTC><Link to Google Books>

See also Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, L.L.D. During the Last Twenty Years of his Life. 4th edition. (London: Cadell, 1786). <Link>

Introspection; Madness

04/18/2004

02/18/2009