MINOR CORRESPONDENCE.

DR. HAWKSWORTH'S BROTHER-IN-LAW, MR. RYLAND.-MRS. MARY MASTERS.-MRS ANNA WILLIAMS.-JEDIDIAH BUXTON.-BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND PETER COLLINSON. THE DEATH OF EDWARD CAVE.

MR. BOSWELL once inquired of Francis Barber, Dr. Johnson's negro servant, who were the most frequent visitors to Johnson when he was left in deep affliction upon his wife's death in 1753. After mentioning Dr. Bathurst and Mr. Diamond an apothecary, and the blind Miss Williams who resided in the house with him in Gough-square, Frank added, “There were also Mr. Cave, Dr. Hawksworth, Mr. Ryland, merchant on Towerhill, Mrs. Masters the poetess, who lived with Mr. Cave, Mrs. (Elizabeth) Carter, and sometimes Mrs. Macaulay (then Miss Sawbridge); also Mrs. Gardiner, wife of a tallow-chandler on Snow-hill, not in the learned way, but a worthy good woman;" after whose names follow those of Mr. (subsequently Sir Joshua) Reynolds, and others of higher grade and greater notoriety.

This passage presents a remarkable group of the immediate associates of SYLVANUS URBAN: naming first Mr. Cave, who, before another year was over, was himself in the tomb; next Dr. Hawksworth, who had become his best friend and contributor; and then Mr. Ryland, who was Hawksworth's brother-in-law.

Mr. John Ryland, as well as Hawksworth, was one of the original members of Johnson's Club, formed at the King's Head, in Ivy-lane, in the winter of 1749. It did not last long; but the survivors, Johnson, Ryland, Sir John Hawkins, and Mr. Payne, of the Bank of England, met again to

I find, since writing the note to my last chapter, at p. 285, that my friend Hawksworth latterly wrote his name with an e inserted-Hawkesworth; which accounts for the orthography that has prevailed with his biographers. This alteration appears on the title-page of his Voyages, and in a letter written shortly before his death to Joseph Cradock, Esq., F.S.A., which is printed in that gentleman's Memoirs.

Sir John Hawkins says until about 1756, and he enumerates ten members; viz., the Rev. Dr. Salter, father of the Master of the Charterhouse; Hawksworth; Ryland; Mr. John Payne, bookseller, the original publisher of the Rambler, and afterwards chief Accountant of the Bank of England; Mr. Samuel Dyer; Dr. William M'Ghie, a Scots physician; Dr. Edmund Barker, a young physician; Dr. Richard Bathurst, also a young physician; Hawkins himself, and Johnson: but Dr. Johnson, in his letters to Mrs. Thrale, Dec. 13, 1783, and April 19, 1784, recognises only six- the four who met again in 1783, with Hawksworth and Dyer, then deceased; and says that they had not met for thirty years.

talk over their lives' experience, like the four old men in the Senile Colloquium of Erasmus, in the year 1783. Mr. Ryland was also, I believe, a member of the Literary Club, which was established in 1763, and probably of that formed in Essex-street especially for the consolation of Johnson's declining days. He was certainly a constant visitor of Dr. Johnson during his last illness, and he furnished some of the particulars for the article which commemorated the death of our illustrious friend in our Obituary for December 1784. Whilst Hawksworth conducted the Review department of the GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE, Ryland was a frequent contributor, and sometimes, in his brother-in-law's absence, he undertook its arrangement. "He was a good scholar, and expressed himself, both in writing and speaking, in a peculiarly elegant and forcible manner. From long habits of intimacy, he occasionally caught the expressions of his friends Johnson and Hawksworth; but his mode of thinking was his own d."

Miss Elizabeth Carter's early connection with the GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE I have already related somewhat at fulle. The name of “Mrs. Masters, the poetess," is one now less remembered. Mr. Boswell has reported that she "lived with Mr. Cave," but that was only during an occasional sojourn in London, for her usual residence was in the East of England, first at Norwich, and afterwards at Burgh Castle, near Yarmouth. After she had been a contributor to my poetical pages for some time, she published a small volume of Poems by subscription in the year 1738, and subsequently, in 1755, also by subscription, a larger collection of Familiar

The Essex-street club was not set on foot until December, 1783. In August of that year Johnson writes to Mr. Hoole,-"I hear from Dr. Brocklesby and Mr. Ryland that the club is not crowded. I hope we shall enliven it when winter brings us together."

These lines are quoted from the memoir of Mr. Ryland in GENT. MAG., vol. lxviii. p. 629; also given, with some alterations, in Nichols' Literary Anecdotes, vol. ix. p. 500. Mr. Ryland died June 24, 1798, ag d eighty-one.

e In chapter iii., Sept., pp. 273, 4.

f Mrs. Masters' list of subscribers in 1755 amounts to about a thousand names. Among them appear—

The Rev. Dr Birch, Secretary to the Royal Society, and Rector of St Margaret Patton.

Mr Samuel Johnson, A.M., Author of the Rambler, &c.

Mr Sam. Richardson, Author of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Cha. Grandison. 4 Books. Mrs Anna Williams. 2 Books.

We find also the names of Robert Masters, B.D., Fellow of Bennet College, for two books; Miss Lucretia Masters; Mrs. Masters, of Brook, Kent; the Rev. Henry Heaton, B.D., Fellow of Bennet College, for five books, and the Rev. Mr. Jos Grigg, for fourteen. Dr. Johnson's active interference in favour of Mrs. Masters appears in a letter written by her to Dr. Birch, dated 7th March 1755:-" My list is embellished with the names of many eminent persons, both clergy and laity. The Earl and Countess of Cork subscribed upon sight of a Proposal tender'd them by the Author of the Rambler, who is himself a subscriber, and Mr. Richardson, Mr. Hawksworth, and other gentlemen of genius.”—(Birch MS. Corresp. in the British Museum.)

Letters and Poems, partly her own, and partly selected or contributed by her friends.

It resembled, in that respect, the volume of "Miscellanies, in Prose and Verse," published in 1766 for the benefit of Mrs. Anna Williams, the blind protégée and tea-makers of Dr. Johnson; and who also was the intimate friend of the benevolent Mrs. Gardiner, and bequeathed all her little property to a school for deserted girls in the parish of St. Sepulchre, of which that lady was the main supporth.

I may here notice, en passant, another temporary inmate of Saint John's Gate; I mean Jedidiah Buxton, a mental calculator of extraordinary powers, whose portrait was published in the Magazine for June 1754. This man, though the son of the schoolmaster, and grandson of a vicar, of his native parish, which was Elmton, in Derbyshire, had never learned to write, but he could conduct the most prolonged and intricate calculations by his memory only. The first account of him was communicated to the Magazine of January 1751, by Mr. George Saxe, of Sherwood Forest; and in that for August following there appeared further anecdotes written by Mr. Francis Holliday. In 1753 (p. 557), Mr. Holliday gave some additional particulars; and in the spring of 1754 Jedidiah paid his visit to London, with the express motive of obtaining a sight of the King and Queen; for, after figures, royalty formed the only object of his curiosity. Old Mr. Cave was then lately dead, but we lodged Jedidiah in St. John's Gate. He did not accomplish the object of his journey, owing to the royal family having removed from London into greater privacy at Kensington; but he was introduced to the Royal Society, whom he called the volk of the Siety Court, and who, having tested his calculating abilities, dismissed him with a handsome gratuity. We also took him to see Garrick enact Richard the Third at Drury-lane; but, undazzled by the splendour of the scene, and unaffected by the passion of the actor or the sentiments of the poet, Jedidiah employed himself in reckoning the number of words he heard, and in calculating the sum-total of the steps made by the dancers! The innumerable sounds produced by the musical instruments perplexed and entirely confounded him. I retail these particulars from our last account of this extraordinary being, which might safely be added to the other biographies assembled in Johnson's Works, as the following passage will amply justify such appropriation:

"With this print it was greatly wished some account of his life could be given; but the life of laborious poverty is necessarily uniform and obscure. The history of one day would almost include the events of all. Time, with respect to Buxton, changed

"I have frequently taken tea with Dr. Johnson, made by Mrs. Williams."-Mr. Nichols in Literary Anecdotes, ii. 184.

h In 1777, on Easter-day, Johnson "dined, by an appointment, with Mrs. Gardiner, and passed the afternoon with such calm gladness of mind as it is very long since I felt before." Mrs. Gardiner is noticed at further length by Boswell under the year 1783,"who, though in the humble station of a tallow-chandler upon Snow-hill, was a woman of excellent good sense, pious, and charitable. She told me she had been introduced to Johnson by Mrs. Masters, the poetess, whose volumes he revised, and, it is said, illuminated here and there with a ray of his own genius." Johnson left Mrs. Gardiner in his will a book "at her election, to keep as a token of remembrance." She died in 1789, aged 74. Mrs. Anna Williams died in 1783, aged 77.

This paper, by a typographical error, is signed T. Holliday. Its writer was already known to Mr. Cave, from his having translated into English "The Differential Method; or a Treatise concerning Summation and Interpolation of Infinite Series, by James Stirling, Esq., F.R.S.," printed at St. John's Gate in 1749. See vol. xix. p. 336.

nothing but his age; nor did the seasons vary his employment, except that in winter he used a flail, and in summer a ling-hook. Some particulars, however," &c., &c.

At the period when the attention of SYLVANUS URBAN (after the termination of the Rebellion of 1745, and the suspension of his report of debates in Parliament,) was withdrawn from politics, and largely devoted to scientific matters, ELECTRICITY had become a fashionable pursuit with the philosophers. The Royal Society, in 1745, had given their annual medal to Mr. Watson, of Aldersgate-street, for his discoveries in this science. Earlier in that year, the Magazine for April, at pp. 193-197, had contained "an historical account of the wonderful discoveries made in Germany, &c. concerning electricity;" and early in the next yeark was announced the discovery by Professor Musschenbroek, of Leyden, of the instrument afterwards called the "Leyden phial." The indexes to the Magazine for 1746 and the succeeding years refer to many articles on the subject of Electricity, by various writers.

The earliest account of the electrical experiments made by Benjamin Franklin, at Philadelphia, (where he was then the post-master, appeared anonymously in the GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE for January 17501. In that for April following his remarks on the effects of points in electricity" were given as communicated "from a Gentleman in America, in a letter to Mr. P. C., FR.S." This correspondent in London was Mr. Peter Collinson, who, though a mercer in Cheapside, was a Fellow of the Royal Society-for the temple of science at Somerset-house was not then so difficult of access as of late. Collinson was previously a contributor to SYLVANUS URBAN; and when he brought the whole of his correspondence with Franklin to Mr. Cave, the latter undertook to publish it in a separate pamphlet. This appeared from the press at St. John's Gate, in quarto, 1751. It was soon after translated into French, and republished at Paris; and in 1753 the Royal Society awarded to the author their gold medal for "his useful discoveries in electricity." I could not but feel a personal interest in this triumph. I indulged it by giving an engraving of the Copley medal, as inscribed with Franklin's name, in the Magazine for December; and by commemorating in my emblematic frontispiece my first * Vol xvi. p. 163.

A subscription library set on foot by Franklin at Philadelphia, in the year 1730, had received Mr. Collinson's immediate aid, and for more than thirty years he continued to act as the agent in London for supplying it with books. It had before the year 1770 become the model of more than thirty such libraries in the United States. "During the same time he transmitted to the directors of the library the earliest accounts of every new European improvement in agriculture and the arts, and every philosophical discovery; among which, in 1745, he sent over an account of the new German experiments in electricity, together with a glass tube, and some directions for using it, so as to repeat the experiments. This was the first notice I had of that curious subject, which I afterwards prosecuted with some diligence, being encouraged by the friendly reception he gave to the letters I wrote to him upon it."-Letter of Benjamin Franklin to Michael Collinson, Esq., Feb. 8, 1770.

In the Magazine for 1748, p. 484, are "Observations on the Cancer-Major, or larger Crab, found in the sea at Crabnighton in the Isle of Wight, by Mr. P. Collinson, F.R.S." In the memoir of Collinson appended to the Works of Dr. Fothergill, 1781, 8vo., is given, at p. 617, what was said to be a complete list of Mr. Collinson's papers inserted in the GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE; but they are only thirteen in number, and ranging from 1751 to 1766. They include a plan for a lasting peace with the Indians, in Sept. 1763; some anecdotes of the late Dr. Stephen Hales, 1764; an account of the late Dr. William Stukeley, May 1765: the rest are on subjects of natural history. He also procured from Spain the account of the management of sheep in that country, printed in the GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE for May and June 1764.