Johnson's Life and Genius.
��you are able to bestow. I shall now live mihi carior*, with a higher opinion of my own merit.
' I am, my Lord,
' your Lordship's most obliged, ' most grateful,
' and most humble servant,
' SAMUEL JOHNSON.
'September, 1784.'
We have in this instance the exertion of two congenial minds ; one, with a generous impulse relieving merit in distress 2 , and the other, by gratitude and dignity of sentiment rising to an equal elevation.
It seems, however, that greatness of mind is not confined to greatness of rank. Dr. Brocklesby was not content to assist with his medical art ; he resolved to minister to his patient's mind, and pluck from his memory the sorrow* which the late refusal from a high quarter might occasion. To enable him to visit the south of France in pursuit of health, he offered from his own funds an annuity of one hundred pounds, payable quarterly 4 .
��1 Perhaps Johnson had in mind Juvenal's line (Sat. x. 1. 350)
' Carior est illis homo quam sibi.'
- Thurlow's neglect of Cowper is
alluded to in the Epistle to Joseph Hill. Southey's Coivper, ix. 269, n. See also ib. iv. 208, 256. On the other hand he treated Crabbe with generosity, who, on being at first neglected by him, had sent him 'some strong, but not disrespectful lines.' He invited the young poet to break fast, and said, 'The first poem you sent me, Sir, I ought to have noticed and I heartily forgive the second.' On parting he put into his hand a sealed packet containing a bank note for a hundred pounds. Crabbe's Works, 1834. i. 56, 101.
3 'About eight or ten days before his death, when Dr. Brocklesby paid him his morning visit, he seemed
��very low and desponding, and said, "I have been as a dying man all night." He then emphatically broke out in the words of Shakspeare,- "Can'st thou not minister to a
mind diseas'd ; Pluck from the memory a rooted
sorrow ; Raze out the written troubles of
the brain ; And, with some sweet oblivious
antidote, Cleanse the stuff d bosom of that
perilous stuff,
Which weighs upon the heart ? " To which Dr. Brocklesby readily answered, from the same great poet :
" therein the patient
Must minister to himself." '
Macbeth, Act v. sc. 3. Life,
iv. 400.
- Life, iv. 338.
This
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