Apropos to this subject is the story of the Cock-lane ghost, which belongs to this period, and which, from Johnson's connection with the affair, pertains to his history. Early in the year 1762 a great excitement was produced among the wonder-loving population of London by a report that strange and unaccountable noises were heard in a house in Cock-lane; and for three months the whole town was astir with the matter. Multitudes were attract

ed to the scene of the wonder, and the witnesses of the phenomena were numerous, and quite above any rational suspicion of collusion with a fraud. Titled nobles

and ministers of state, scholars and divines, were seen among the crowds that dayly and nightly thronged that obscure lane of the city, and pressed for ingress to the humble mansion where the strange phenomena were witnessed. Among others, the late prime minister, Horace Walpole, made a midnight excursion to the haunted dwelling; and we have an account of the adventure in one of his rambling letters :

"I went to hear it," he writes to George Montague; "for it is not an apparition, but an audition... The house, which is borrowed, and to which the ghost has adjourned, is wretchedly small and miserable. When we opened the chamber, in which were fifty people, with no light but one tallow candle at the end, we tumbled over the bed of the child to whom the ghost comes... We heard nothing! They told us, as they would at a puppet-show, that it would not come that night till seven in the morning; that is, when there are only apprentices and old women... The most diverting part is, to hear people wondering when it will be found out, as if there was anything to be found out, as if the actors would make their noises when they could be discovered."

The phenomena that had excited so much interest consisted for the most part of a noise, like knockings, heard chiefly at night, about the bed in which two children slept, one of them a girl of about fifteen, who presently came to be recognized as in some way connected with the cause of the phenomena. All efforts to discover the cause of the strange noises

were unavailing; the wainscoting was removed, but nothing was discovered; and still the noises continued. Other spectral indications were spoken of, but the evidence of their reality was not sufficient to command the confidence of any not already convinced. Of the reality of the noises, however, there could be no rational doubt, notwithstanding Walpole's supercilious sneering at the whole affair as a willful and These knockings designing imposture. were presently attributed to a spirit, that, with mortals in the flesh, and a convenfor some cause, was desirous of conversing announced to the supposed ghost, by which tional language of knocks was invented and the desired communications might be made. It should be noticed that there had been suspicions of foul play toward a woman who had died in that house some two years

before, by a person who was still residing there, though not of the family of the girl so strangely affected by these noises; and this suspicion, no doubt, directed the course of the inquiries addressed to the rapping spirit.

"On the thirteenth of January," says the record, "between eleven and twelve o'clock at night, a respectable clergyman who was sent for, addressing himself to the supposed spirit, desired that if any injury had been done to the person who had lived in that house, he might be answered in the affirmative by a single knock; if the contrary, by two knocks. This was immediately answered by a single knock."

To test the matter still further, and to anticipate any possible doubt in the case, the girl was removed to another house, where a company of near twenty persons, including three clergymen, were collected, and there "they proceeded to ask a variety of questions, to which the supposed spirits answered by giving one knock in the affirmative, and two in the negative." The result of this protracted examination was to determine the fact that the supposed murder by poisoning had really occurred, and that the person suspected was the guilty party. Every effort to detect anything like fraud in the production of the responses entirely failed. The girl's hands were carefully laid outside of the bed-clothes, and diligent search was made for any visible agency in the matter; but nothing of a suspicious character was discovered.

It was at length arranged, as a final test, that certain persons should go with the accused into the vault under the Church

SCENE OF THE COCK-LANE GHOST EXPLOITS.

of St. John's, Clerkenwell, where was the body of the pretended victim, and there the spirit would rap on the coffin. Accordingly, after the spirit had been "seriously advertised" of their intention, they proceeded to the church, and the designated persons descended into the vault with the sexton to identify the coffin, and there challenged the spirit to fulfill its promise; but there was no response. The failure was complete; and now the fickle public were as earnest in their denunciation of the fraud as before they were eager to believe the greatest absurdities.

The poor child was now subjected to a course of torturing examinations, as blind and unreasonable as the credulity that had before been exercised toward her supposed revelations. She was at last removed to the house of a gentleman, where her bed was tied up in the manner of a hammock, about a yard and a half from the ground, and her hands and feet extended as wide as they could be without injury, and fastened for two nights successively, during which no noises were heard. At last, alarmed by threats that she should be sent to Newgate unless the noises were reproduced by a given time, she concealed a piece of board," six inches long and four inches wide," under her clothes, with which at the appointed time certain sounds were produced; but the attendants de

clared that "these noises were not like those which used to be made." But the public were now as eager to believe the fraud as they had before been to swallow down the mystery, and magnify it into an indubitable spiritual manifestation. Great indignation was expressed toward the chief actors in the matter; the whole affair was brought under the cognizance of the criminal courts, and the strong arm of punitive justice brought to bear upon them.

It is no part of the duty of a mere chronicler to explain the obscurities that he records; a suggestion, however, in this case will not be wholly out of place. It is now pretty well ascertained that the human system, in certain conditions of electro-nervous excitement, is capable of producing, by a spasmodic movement of the muscles and joints, noises similar to a dull heavy rapping. It is further worthy of notice, that all well-attested cases of the kind having originated with girls in their teens-a class of persons especially liable to such nervous derangementsthese phenomena have hitherto received but little attention from persons capable of investigating them in a satisfactory manner; while the subtilty of the agent, and the prevailing delicacy as to displaying any abnormal condition in one's own physical system, have rendered such investigations peculiarly difficult. With the ignorant and superstitious, the marvelous is at once accounted supernatural, which the designing often pervert to their own reprehensible purposes. So it was in this

case.

The girl, affected by an agent of which she knew nothing, presumed herself to be acted upon by a spirit. Motions produced without volition, by muscles already intensified by nervous excitement, might readily fail to be recognized by an uneducated child in the bewilderment so produced. The popular prejudices as to the impossibility of concealing a murder, and of the restlessness of the soul of the victim till the guilty one is brought to justice, would suffice to direct the current thus excited in the way that a blind suspicion had already prepared. But when the attempt was made to remove the phenomena from the child, the whole necessarily failed. The physical manifestations, in the earlier stages of this case, were sufficiently attested: the spiritual portion was the effect of superstition and fraud.

While this affair of the ghost was the topic of conversation throughout the town, it of course was not excluded from the dayly levees at Temple-lane, or the evening loungings at the Mitre. Johnson's system of belief in such matters has been stated in his own language, and in terms that none can gainsay. But it is said that he who could reason so well on this subject could not always command his nerves when the idea of a wandering sprite was brought forcibly to his imagination. Whether Johnson personally visited the scene while the delusion was in progress is not certainly ascertained. Boswell stoutly denies that he did; but others have believed that he wrote in this case what he wished to be true, rather than what he knew to be so. It is certain that Johnson took a lively interest in the matter, and did not from the first, like Walpole, sneer at it as a palpable imposition. When, however, the later frauds were detected, he yielded to the popular current, and spoke of the whole affair as an imposition and delusion. He afterward drew up a statement of the case for the information of the public, which was inserted in the newspapers, and in the Gentleman's Magazine for July, 1762. So ended the affair of the ghost of Cock-lane.

Returning from this long digression, we find the now fast friends, a week after the last-mentioned memorable interview, again at the Mitre; and this time Goldsmith is of their company. Boswell had recognized him from the first as a bright star among the wits of the metropolis, and recently that estimate had been greatly hightened and confirmed by a declaration of Johnson's that "Dr. Goldsmith is one of the first men we now have as an author, and he is a very worthy man, too." He therefore wrote him down as 66 one of the brightest ornaments of the Johnsonian school." It might have puzzled a wiser man than Boswell to tell by what rule of classification Goldsmith is ranked in that school; but the eyes of the young Scot were so dazzled with Johnson's radiance that he could have no notion of brightness independent of him. The conversation that evening was all in character; but as the presence of a third person acts as a check upon the spontaneous freedom of communication between the most endeared friends, so even Goldsmith's presence restrained the garrulous egotism

of Boswell, and the headlong caresses of Johnson.

Mrs. Williams at this time had lodgings in Bolt Court, Fleet-street, and thither Johnson often repaired after an evening at the Mitre to drink tea, and occasionally he would bring with him some one of his intimate friends. On this occasion Goldsmith was the favored man.

"Dr. Goldsmith being a privileged man," says Boswell," went with him this night, strutting away and calling to me with an air of superiority, like that of an esoteric over an exMrs. Williams's.' I confess I then envied him oteric disciple of a sage of antiquity, 'I go to this mighty privilege of which he seemed so proud; but it was not long before I obtained the same rank of distinction."

From this time till Boswell left for the Continent, in the early part of August, scarce a day passed in which he and Johnson were not together. On the sixth of July Boswell gave a party to a select company of his new friends-Johnson, Goldsmith, Davies, Eccles, (an Irish gentleman,) and Ogilvie, the Scotch poet. Goldsmith, he tells us, with what seemed to him an unpardonable boldness, which he attributed to his too great eagerness to "shine," disputed with Johnson about a maxim of law, as to which it is probable neither of the disputants cared a rush. Ogilvie commended the fertility of Scotland, but Goldsmith differed with him, especially as to the land about Edinburgh, which he had seen when he studied medicine in that city. Chafed at this the testy Scot took up a topic as to which he thought he was safe from contradiction, and asserted that Scotland had a great many noble wild prospects. To this Johnson replied with much earnestness:

"I believe, sir, you have a great many. Norway, too, has noble wild prospects, and Lapland is remarkable for prodigious noble wild prospects; but, sir, let me tell you, the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England."

This withering gibe was received with roars of laughter.

Another private supper at the Mitre gave further opportunities for confidential intercommunications and mutual professions of esteem. Boswell expressed a regret that he could not use the same freedom with his own father, who neither on account of age or learning was further removed from him, that he could with Johnson after so brief an acquaintance. Johnson replied by suggesting the difference of the dispositions and circumstances as in part the cause of this difference, and then going still deeper into the subject he found the occasion of this mutual shyness in the paternal and filial relations: "Besides, sir, there must always be a struggle between a father and a son, while one

aims at power, and the other at independence." This remark, which is most unquestionably true in very many cases, (and probably it was more frequently so then and with them than now with us,) is full of practical instruction to fathers. No sight is more pleasing than that of a father and son associated as elder and younger brothers: in no other can the opposing properties of youth and age be made so effectually to temper each other; and yet how rare is the sight!

A further explanation of this particular case, and of Johnson's tastes, as shown in the selection of his associates, is given in a remark made at a subsequent conversation. It is known that Johnson's four most intimate friends, Langton, Beauclerk, Goldsmith, and Boswell, were all young men compared with himself; and all but Goldsmith were yet boys when their mutual attachments began

:

"Sir," said he, "I love the acquaintance of young people, because, in the first place, I don't like to think myself growing old. In the next place, young acquaintances must last longest, if they do last; and then, sir, young men have more virtue than old men; they have more generous sentiments in every respect. I love the young dogs of this age: they have more wit and humor, and knowledge of life, than we had; but then the dogs are not so good scholars."

Johnson took early occasions to indoctrinate his docile disciple into his own political notions. With him the idea of

government was in all things the application of force to restrain the vicious and correct the erring. This rule he applied to the school and the family, as well as to the State. He considered a strong government the only safe one, and its safety he always proportioned to its strength. This was his theory; though when in the opposition he could bandy the truisms of freedom as well as a Sidney or a Vane. Subordination was his favorite idea in

politics, upon which he was constantly insisting in theory, though himself among the most indomitable of mankind:

"Sir, I would no more deprive a nobleman of his respect than of his money. I consider myself as acting a part in the great system of society, and I do to others as I would have them do to me; I would behave to a nobleman as I should expect he would behave to me, were I a nobleman, and he Sam Johnson. Sir, there is lican. One day when I was at her house, I put one Mrs. Macaulay in this town, a great repubon a very grave countenance, and said to her, 'Madam, I am now become a convert to your way of thinking. I am convinced that all manunquestionable proof that I am in earnest, here kind are on an equal footing; and, to give an is a very sensible, civil, well-behaved fellowcitizen, your footman; I desire that he may be allowed to sit down and dine with us.'... She has never liked me since."

It is not strange that Johnson, who commonly formed his opinions from the force of impulses, and changed them only from caprice, should mistake such a sophism for a sound argument. The republicanism he was opposing declared the political equality of all men; and because he found a republican who was not ready to concede universal social equality, he fancied he had "showed her the absurdity of the leveling doctrine."

Johnson was always unshaken in his belief of the truth of Christianity, and steady as well as devout in his reverence for its doctrines and ordinances. Yet as he was, as he said of himself, a man of the world," mingling freely with all sorts of persons, he became well acquainted with the various objections urged by infidels against the Bible, and was thus prepared at all times to meet their sophisms, as well as to assign a rational basis for the faith he cherished. The sophistical mode of arguing adopted by a certain class of skeptics, in order to invalidate the whole mass of the Christian evidences, is happily disposed of in the following remark. The reader will perceive that it is an early specimen of a mode of defense more re

cently-both largely and most effectively— employed against the rationalistic skepticism of the present age. Talking of those who denied the truth of Christianity, he said:

can

"It is always easy to be on the negative side... I deny that Canada is taken, and support my denial by pretty good arguments. The French are a much more numerous people than we; and it is not likely that they would allow us to take it. But, it is answered, the ministry have assured us, in all the formality of the Gazette, that it is taken. Very true; but the ministry have put us to an enormous expense by the war in America, and it is their interest to persuade us that we have got something for our money. But, it is further affirmed the fact is confirmed by thousands of men who were at the taking of it. Ay, but these men have still more interest in deceiving us. They don't want that you should think the French have beat them, but that they have beat the French. Now, suppose you should go over and find that it really is taken, that would only satisfy yourself; for when you come home, we will not believe you: we will say you have been bribed. Yet, sir, notwithstanding all these plausible objections, we have no doubt that Canada is ours. Such is the weight of common testimony. How much stronger are the evidences of the Christian religion !"

As to the Christian religion, he remarks again :

"Sir, besides the strong evidence which we have for it, there is a balance in its favor from the number of great men who have been convinced of its truth, after a serious consideration of the question. Grotius was an acute man, a lawyer, a man accustomed to examine evidence, and he was convinced. Grotius was not a recluse, but a man of the world, who certainly had no bias to the side of religion. Sir Isaac Newton set out an infidel, and came to be a very firm believer."

"I talked of preaching," writes Boswell, a few days later, "and of the great success which those called Methodists have." Johnson answered :

"Sir, it is owing to their expressing themselves in a plain and familiar manner, which is the only way to do good to the common peo ple, and which clergymen of genius and learning ought to do from a principle of duty, when it is suited to their congregations;-a practice for which they will be praised by men of sense. To insist against drunkenness as a crime, because it debases reason, the noblest faculty of man, would be of no service to the common people; but to tell them that they may die in a fit of drunkenness, and show them how dreadful that would be, cannot fail to make a deep impression. Sir, when your Scotch clergy give up their homely manner, religion will soon decay in that country."

Near the last of July the two friends spent a day in a social ramble on the Thames. Setting out from the Temple

Stairs they dropped down to the Old Swan, where they landed and walked thence to Billingsgate. Here they again embarked, and moved smoothly along the surface of the gentle stream. The day was fine; the river scene was at once quiet and animated, and the surrounding country was clothed in the richest verdure of summer. But all this suburban loveliness availed but little with Johnson, whose imperfect vision denied him the power to enjoy it; and Boswell was much more elated with his company than with the day and the landscape. At Greenwich, he tells us, he took from his pocket a copy of Johnson's “London," and "read aloud and with enthusiasm" the lines relating to that locality :— "On Thames' banks in silent thought we stood, Where Greenwich smiles upon the silver flood: Pleased with the seat which gave ELIZA birth, We kneel and kiss the consecrated earth."

That day's excursion had been undertaken as likely to afford an opportunity for Johnson to give and Boswell to receive a somewhat extended course of instruction as to his future studies. The advice was accordingly given, but poor Boswell was too delirious with pleasure and gratified vanity to profit by the opportunity. He only recollected an animated blaze of eloquence, which roused all his intellectual powers to their highest pitch, but so dazzled him that his memory quite failed to retain the substance. At evening they strolled into Greenwich Park, then clothed in the luxuriance of summer's verdure, and bathed in the soft light of the setting sun. Johnson, from the imperfection of his eyesight, as well as from a defect of Laste, was no admirer of the beauties of nature, yet the loveliness of this scene affected him, and he asked, "Is not this very fine?" Boswell, who was equally defective in taste, but always ready with a fulsome compliment, replied, "Yes, but not equal to Fleet-street." For this absurd specimen of barbarism he attempts to defend himself by the saying of " a very fashionable baronet," who had been foolish enough to say, relative to the fragrance of a May evening, "This may do very well; but for my part I prefer the smell of a flambeau at the play-house." A social supper at the "Turk's Head" closed this memorable day in the young Scot's history.

The time for the departure of the gratified hero-worshiper was now at hand.