and had a propensity to learning, which his parents not being able to gratify, he went to live as a shopman with a woollen- draper at Hull : with him he stayed two years, during which tirne he learned from a neighbour of his master somewhat of the practice of physic : at the end thereof he came to London, with a view possibly to improve himself in that profession ; but by some strange accident was led to pursue another course, and became steward, or some other upper servant, to the then lord Cardigan [or Cadogan] ; and having saved some money, he took a resolution to travel, and visited France and Italy for the purpose, as his letters mention, of gaining experience in physic, and, returning to London with a valuable library which he had ^collected abroad, placed one of his brothers apprentice to a mathematical-instrument maker, and provided for the education of another. After this he went to Paris, and, for improvement, attended the hospitals in that city. At the end of five years he returned to England, and taking lodgings in the house of an attorney in Northumberland court, near Charing cross, he became a practicer of physic. The letter adds, that he was about seventy-eight at the time of his death.
The account of Levett in the Gentleman's Magazine is anony mous ; I nevertheless give it verbatim, and mean hereafter to insert a letter of Johnson's to Dr. Lawrence, notifying his death, and stanzas of his writing on that occasion x .
' Mr. Levett, though an Englishman by birth, became early in life a waiter at a coffee-house in Paris. The surgeons who frequented it, finding him of an inquisitive turn, and attentive to their conversation, made a purse for him, and gave him some instructions in their art. They afterwards furnished him with the means of other knowledge, by procuring him free admission to such lectures in pharmacy and anatomy as were read by the ablest professors of that period. Hence his introduction to a business, which afforded him a continual, though slender maintenance. Where the middle part of his life was spent, is uncertain. He resided, however, above twenty years under the roof of Johnson, who never wished him to be regarded as an
1 Life, iv. 137.
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