WILLIAM AMI) MAHY.

49

over him. The Commons requested the King to compensatethe sufferer by some ecclesiastical preferment.* William, how- ■ever, found that he could not, without great inconvenience,grant this request. For Johnson, though brave, honest andreligious, had always been rash, mutinous and quarrelsome;and, since he had endured for his opinions a martyrdom moreterrible than death, the infirmities of his temper and under-standing had increased to such a degree that he was as dis-agreeable to Low Churchmen as to High Churchmen. Liketoo many other men, who are not to be turned from the path ofright by pleasure, by lucre or by danger, he mistook the im-pulses of his pride and resentment for the monitions of con-science, and deceived himself into a belief that, in treatingfriends and foes with indiscriminate insolence and asperity, heivas merely showing his Christian faithfulness and courage.Burnet, by exhorting him to patience and forgiveness of in-juries, made him a mortal enemy. “Tell His Lordship,” saidthe inflexible priest, “to mind his own business, and to let melook after mine.”** It soon began to be whispered that Johnsonwas mad. He accused Burnet of being the author of the re-port, and avenged himself by writing libels so violent that theystrongly confirmed the imputation which they were meant torefute. The King, therefore, thought it better to give out ofhis own revenue a liberal compensation for the wrongs whichthe Commons had brought to his notice than to place an eccen-tric and irritable man in a situation of dignity and public trust.Johnson was gratified with a present of a thousand pounds, anda pension of three hundred a year for two lives. His son wasalso provided for in the public service.***

* Commons’ Journals, June 24. 1683.

** Johnson tells this story himself in his strange pamphlet entitled,Notes upon the Phoenix Edition of the Pastoral Letter, 1694,

*** Some Memorials of the Reverend Samuel Joluison, prefixed to thofolio edition of his works, 1710.

Macaulay, History. V. 4

CJIAP.

XIV.

1G89.