Johnson, as I beheld him, was a full, pursy Man, very ill drest, and of slovenly Aspect. James Boswell, a young Scotchman of excellent Family and great Learning, but small Wit, whose metrical Effusions I had sometimes revis’d.ĭr. I had no personal Acquaintance with the Doctor till 1763, when I was presented to him at the Mitre Tavern by Mr. Richardson who the Poet was, told me ‘that Mr. Pope’s petty Jealousy, he gave the Verses of his new Rival no small Praise and having learnt thro’ Mr. Pope. Notwithstanding what some Detractors have said of Mr. On the very Day it appear’d, there was also publish’d a Satire in Imitation of Juvenal, intitul’d " London", by the then unknown Johnson and this so struck the Town, that many Gentlemen of Taste declared, it was the Work of a greater Poet than Mr. Pope had just compleated his Epilogue to his Satires (the Piece beginning: Not twice a Twelvemonth you appear in Print.), and had arrang’d for its Publication. I had first Knowledge of the Doctor in May of the year 1738, tho’ I did not at that Time meet him. Johnson, that I am at this time desir’d to write I will pass over my Youth for the present.
But since it is of my more recent Associate, the late Dr. Pope, whom I knew and respected till the Day of his Death. Swift I later became very well acquainted, and was an even more familiar Friend to Mr. Dryden, who sat much at the Tables of Will’s Coffee-House. Coming early to London, I saw as a Child many of the celebrated Men of King William’s Reign, including the lamented Mr. Be it then known that I was born on the family Estate in Devonshire, of the ١٠th day of August, 1690 (or in the new Gregorian Stile of Reckoning, the ٢٠th of August), being therefore now in my ٢٢٨th year.
Tho’ many of my readers have at times observ’d and remark’d a Sort of antique Flow in my Stile of Writing, it hath pleased me to pass amongst the Members of this Generation as a young Man, giving out the Fiction that I was born in 1890, in America. I am now, however, resolv’d to unburthen myself of a Secret which I have hitherto kept thro’ Dread of Incredulity and to impart to the Publick a true knowledge of my long years, in order to gratifie their taste for authentick Information of an Age with whose famous Personages I was on familiar Terms.
The Privilege of Reminiscence, however rambling or tiresome, is one generally allow’d to the very aged indeed, ’tis frequently by means of such Recollections that the obscure occurrences of History, and the lesser Anecdotes of the Great, are transmitted to Posterity. Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
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