Street. He had read the life of Savage, and was prepared to admire its author; and Johnson on his part was so taken by a chance remark of the painter's, that he went back with him to his house, and supped with him that very night. A day or two afterwards, Reynolds returned the visit, bringing with him Roubilliac the sculptor, who was anxious to be introduced to Johnson, in order to obtain from him an epitaph for a monument he was executing for Westminster Abbey. Johnson took them both up to the garret, which he called his library. His dictionary labours had been pursued in this room, and the floor was still littered with books which had been used for reference and then thrown aside. A crazy deal table, and a still more crazy armchair on three legs, were the only other articles of furniture which it contained. Johnson seated himself without ceremony in the chair, and then, pen in hand, waited to know what the sculptor wished him to say. Roubilliac, a little frightened perhaps, was beginning in his full-blown French style, when Johnson broke in sternly with his "Come, come, sir; let us have no more of this bombastic ridiculous rodomontade; but let me know, in simple language, the name and quality of the person whose epitaph you intend to have me write." "Simple language" not being the strong point of the doctor himself, Roubilliac might easily have retorted had he dared; but few men cared to bandy words with Johnson, whose power of sarcasm was so nicely balanced with his powers of abuse, that, as poor "Goldie" once wittily expressed it, if his pistol missed fire, he was sure to knock you down with the butt-end of the weapon.

The friendship between Johnson and Reynolds, once begun, lasted without interruption until the death, thirty years afterwards, of the Doctor. It was a friendship founded so firmly on feelings of mutual respect and esteem, that even the occasional inequalities of the great Samuel's temper had no further effect than occasionally to ruffle the surface by a passing breeze.

If he went too far, Reynolds knew how to recall him quietly to his better self, and on some occasions he even managed to make him apologise for his rudeness before he left the house. It was not, however, so difficult to make Johnson apologise as it might at first sight ppear. With all his violence of temper, he respected those who had enough of manly firmness to oppose themselves to his dictatorship, and enough of self-command to do so with moderation; and in such a case he was as ready as a repentant child to make it up (so to speak) with any one he had offended.

There is something quite touching in the account Miss Reynolds gives us of his contrition on one of these occasions. He had said something savage at her brother's table to the Dean of Derry, who

received it in silence, more dignified and far more cutting than the bitterest retort could possibly have been. The big doctor could not stand it. He left the other gentlemen at their wine, and sitting down by Miss Reynolds, bemoaned his evil temper, which had led him to attack a minister of the gospel, and one too who had received his rudeness with such mild and dignified tranquillity. Miss Reynolds does not seem to have given him much comfort; and when the other gentlemen came in, "it was quite pathetic" (we quote her own words) "to see him go up to the Dean, and make him sit beside him on the sofa, with a beseeching look for pardon and such fond gestures, literally smoothing down his arms and knees, as seemed at once to express repentance and deprecate his pardon."

Reynolds himself, however, did not always come off so easily. It was at a party at Cumberland's, we believe, that Johnson once called for another cup of tea, and Reynolds reminded him (in pity for the lady of the house perhaps) that he had already had eleven. "Sir," cried the doctor fiercely, "I did not number your glasses of wine; why should you count up my cups of tea? No, sir, if it had not been for your remark, I should have saved the lady all further trouble; as it is, I must request her to round my number." The lady seems to have complied with a good grace with this request, and touched by her gentleness Johnson instantly set himself to repair his rudeness by showing how much ruder he could have been if he had not really loved his company. "Madam," quoth he, "I must tell you for your comfort that you escape better than another lady did, who asked me for no other purpose than to make a zany of me, and to set me gabbling to a parcel of people I knew nothing of. So, madam, I had my revenge; for I swallowed twenty-five cups of her tea, and did not treat her to as many words."

Perhaps Reynolds was secretly as tired as this poor lady must have been of the eternal tea-drinkings which were the inevitable accompaniment of Dr. Johnson's visits. Daylight is too precious to a painter to be wasted wilfully. He cannot, as a writer can, crowd into the small hours of the night the work that should have been distributed through the day, and not even for Johnson's sake would Reynolds have neglected his profession. When, therefore, Johnson dropt in uninvited to dine at four, with the manifest intention of teadrinking until midnight, Reynolds used to leave him to his sister's care and walk off quietly to his studio. Nor was the Doctor likely to resent, or even to regret, the change; for he loved Miss Reynolds, and with all his outward roughness of demeanour, there was a fund of tenderness in that great heart of his, which, without marring the manliness of his intercourse with men, made him turn instinctively

VOL. III.

EE

to the society of women for its unrebuked indulgence. He was naturally a proud man, and poverty had made his pride aggressive. With men, therefore, he was always on his guard lest they should insult his dignity; but no such morbid feeling disturbed him in the society of women; and he was just as true to one phase of the Johnsonian nature when he ran races with the Devonshire lassie on the lawn, puffing and blowing, and throwing his slippers before him, as eager as a boy for victory, as he was to another and sterner mood when he shook the dust from his shoes at Lord Chesterfield's door, and published his Dictionary (an unheard-of audacity in those days) without its matter-of-course dedication to a living lord.

Though Reynolds declined the tea-drinkings, he felt the full value of the Doctor's society, and founded the "Literary Club," which met every Monday evening at the Turk's Head, for the express purpose of making Johnson talk. When he first broached the matter to Johnson, he told him that Lord Charlemont had suggested the idea, and proposed very naturally that his lordship should be chosen as one of its first members; but the sturdy Doctor put in his veto. "No, sir; for in that case we should be called 'Lord Charlemont's Club;' let him come in afterwards." He did come in afterwards, and seems to have had the good sense not to be offended by the delay. He was better treated, however, than Garrick, who, hearing of the club from Reynolds, expressed in an off-hand way his intention to be "one of them." "He be one of us!" cried the enraged Doctor on the speech being reported to him; "how does he know we will permit him? Sir, the first duke in England has no right to hold such language." And as Johnson decreed, so was it done; for Garrick was not admitted until some years afterwards. Goldsmith, Burke, Beauclerc, and "unclubbable Hawkins"-coldshouldered out of the club soon afterwards for a violent attack on Burke-were among its earliest members. It took the name of "The Literary Club," and "Esto perpetua" was its toast and motto.

Pedro di Luna.

(Sketches from the History of Christendom, No. V.)

I.

In a former article we quoted the words of a modern English writer, in which he expressed his wonder that the Papacy should ever have been able to recover its power and prestige, after the humiliations entailed upon it by its long sojourn at Avignon. Such a sentiment was not unnatural in the mind of one who could not have a true idea of the real source of strength and vigour in the institution of which he was speaking-of what was essential and really vital, what accidental and external in it—of the principle of which it is, so to say, the embodiment, the spirit that animates it, and the Hand that guides and holds it up. Even on simple historical grounds, the statement implied in the remark was an exaggeration. We are now about to deal with a shorter phase in the history of the Papacy, at which some of its chroniclers have stood aghast, and which contains events which might seem much more likely in all natural consequence to degrade and ruin such an institution, if it had been possible for a Divine work to be overthrown by the folly and malice of men. The so-called schism of the West, which divided Christendom for the space of forty years, and during which it was really a matter of practical doubt whether the Pope in Italy or the Antipope at Avignon was the lawful successor of St. Peter, might seem a calamity to the Church so great and so fatal, as that the most ingenious malice of her bitterest enemies could invent no greater. keystone of the arch seemed to be split in two, and to threaten the collapse of the whole fabric. Wonderful indeed it is to think how much power for evil against the peace and prosperity of the kingdom of God upon earth was then allowed to the passions and the ambition of a few bad men! And yet still more wonderful the indwelling supernatural healthfulness and strength of the Papacy and of the whole Church, which shook off, as it were, by a kind of spontaneous repulsion, rather than by external aid, the dagger which seemed to have pierced it to the heart. The legitimate Popes were not graced by any remarkable qualities either of genius or of sanctity, so as to draw to themselves allegiance by the force of character; nor was any great saint raised up to settle, as St. Bernard had done in his day, the question between the rival claimants to the Pontifical

The very

throne. It was the universal irresistible feeling of Christendom that there must be but one successor of St. Peter that ended the division. Every thing was made to yield to this, even the rights of the lawful Pontiff. It was not a time of very great theologians, of great purity of manners, of wide-spread devotion, of apostolical simplicity of life; nor on any other subject of European importance could public opinion and general feeling have had an opportunity of declaring themselves in a manner which no one could mistake or gainsay. But the minds of men of every grade and kind in the fourteenth century were more instinctively ruled by Christian and Catholic principles than in the present day. Now we might have them looking on with indifference, while Pope and Antipope fought out their own quarrel for themselves. Or we might hear of a compromise, a division of the seamless robe, by which one might rule in one part of Europe, another over the rest. Or national passions and the jealous policy of rival cabinets would come in, and the schism might be perpetuated because the natural instincts of men are stronger than the supernatural. Nothing of the kind was possible then. It was a simply personal question; there was no principle involved in the difference between one side and the other, much less was there any divergence of doctrine or even of discipline. From Sweden and Norway to Sicily, and from the furthest shores of Portugal to the frontiers of Hungary, the same religion, the same creed, the same rites and sacraments were in possession. But because there was one divinelyappointed centre of unity, with which communion was necessary to all, the doubt about the individual man in whom, for the time being, that centre resided, threw consciences into the most painful trouble, and confused Christian life from one end of Europe to another. In the midst of the strangely anomalous condition of the Church, she was left to herself to set matters to rights in her own way, and to seek in her own legitimate assemblies for a remedy for so abnormal an evil.

Though it is true, as has been said above, that no question of principle was involved in the dispute, it must also be noted that it would have been at the outset little more than an explosion of bad temper, but for the previous existence of elements of discord quite unconnected with it, but which gave terrible strength to the conflagration when it once was lighted up. We have already spoken of the need for reformation among the higher clergy, to which all the best writers of that day bear uniform witness. Any one who laid his hand to this most essential work was sure to be met with fierce opposition; and the delay which had been occasioned by the troubles of the later years of the reign of Gregory XI. only increased the