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Updated: June 28, 2025
The pathetic verses written by Johnson on his death, which happened suddenly three years before his own, shew with what tenderness of affection he regarded Levett. Some time after , to this couple, who did not live in much harmony together, were added Mrs. Desmoulins, the daughter of Dr.
It was for this reason, Sir Robert Walpole said, he always talked bawdy at his table, because in that all could join. Being irritated by hearing a gentleman ask Mr. Levett a variety of questions concerning him, when he was sitting by, he broke out, 'Sir, you have but two topicks, yourself and me.
Hector he says, indeed, "My health has been, from my twentieth year, such as has seldom afforded me a single day of ease." At a time, then, when he was less able than he had once been to sustain a shock, he was suddenly deprived of Mr. Levett, who died on January 17. But, although his health was tottering, the powers of his mind were in no ways impaired, as his letters and conversation showed.
Johnson frequently observed that Levett was indebted to him for nothing more than house-room, his share in a penny loaf at breakfast, and now and then a dinner on a Sunday. Johnson's roll, says Dr.
His old inmates, Levett and Miss Williams, had gone before him; Goldsmith and Garrick and Beauclerk had become memories of the past; and the gloom gathered thickly around him. The old man clung to life with pathetic earnestness. Though life had been often melancholy, he never affected to conceal the horror with which he regarded death.
Let us, my dear, pray for one another, and consider our sufferings as notices mercifully given us to prepare ourselves for another state. I live now but in a melancholy way. My old friend Mr. Levett is dead, who lived with me in the house, and was useful and companionable; Mrs. Desmoulins is gone away ; and Mrs. Williams is so much decayed, that she can add little to another's gratifications.
'My dwelling is but melancholy; both Williams, and Desmoulins, and myself, are very sickly: Frank is not well; and poor Levett died in his bed the other day, by a sudden stroke; I suppose not one minute passed between health and death; so uncertain are human things. 'Such is the appearance of the world about me; I hope your scenes are more cheerful.
I have no middle state between clamour and silence, between general conversation and self-tormenting solitude. Levett is dead, and poor Williams is making haste to die. Piozzi Letters, ii.301. 'Aug. 20. This has been a day of great emotion; the office of the Communion of the Sick has been performed in poor Mrs. Williams's chamber. Ib. 'Sept. 22.
He thus mentions them, together with honest Levett, in one of his letters to Mrs. Thrale: 'Williams hates every body; Levett hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams; Desmoulins hates them both; Poll* loves none of them. * Miss Carmichael. A year later he wrote: At Bolt-court there is much malignity, but of late little hostility. ED.
Levett's, who could not come, and he sent to two more, and they could not; so that, at last, Levett as a great kindness did resolve he would leave his business and come himself, which set me in great ease in my mind, and so home, and there with my wife setting all things in order against to-morrow, having seen Mrs. Turner at home, and so late to bed. 14th.
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