354 A Biographical Sketch of Dr. Johnson
' Tower' d cities please us then, And the busy hum of men 1 .'
But the greatest honour of his life was from a visit that he received from a Great Personage in the Library of the Queen's palace only it was not from a King of his own making 2 . John son on his return repeated the conversation, which was much to the honour of the great person, and was as well supported as Lewis the XlVth could have continued with Voltaire. He said, he only wanted to be more known, to be more loved 3 . They parted, much pleased with each other. If it is not an impertinent stroke of this pen, it were to be wished that one more person had conveyed an enquiry about him during his last illness. ' Every body has left their names, or wanted to know how I do/
says he, ' but ' 4 . In his younger days he had a great many
enemies, of whom he was not afraid.
'Ask you what provocation I have had? The strong antipathy of good to bad V
Churchill, the puissant satirist, challenged Johnson to combat : Satire the weapon 6 . Johnson never took up the gauntlet or replied, for he thought it unbecoming him to defend himself against an author who might be resolved to have the last word 7 . He was content to let his enemies feed upon him as long as they could. This writer has heard Churchill declare, that 'he thought the poems of London, and The Vanity of Human Wishes, full of admirable verses, and that all his compositions were diamonds of the first water.' But he wanted a subject for his pen and for raillery, and so introduced Pomposo into his descriptions. ' For, with other wise folks, he sat up with the ghost V Our author,
to the country one of * near six 6 For Churchill's attack on John- months ' in 1767. Life, iii. 450-3. son see his Works, ed. 1766, i. 216,
1 L Allegro, 1. 1 17. 261 ; ii. 36, and Life, i. 310, 406, 419 ;
3 Life, ii. 33. Tyers apparently iii. I, n. 2. Dr. Warton wrote in
alludes to Johnson's liking for the 1797 : 'We all remember when
House of Stuart. Churchill was more in vogue than
3 For Johnson's praise of the King Gray.' Warton's Pope's Works, i. as 'the finest gentleman he had ever Introduction, p. 55.
seen ' see id. ii. 40. 7 For Johnson's silence on attack
4 I suppose the King is meant. see Life, i. 314 ; ante, i. 270, 407.
5 Pope, Epilogue to the Satires, 8 ' The gentlemen eminent for their ji. 197. rank and character,' among them
who
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