In the December of this year his father died.
Johnson was so far fortunate, that the respectable character of his
parents, and his own merit, had, from his earliest years, secured him
a kind reception in the best families at Lichfield. Among these I
can mention Mr. Howard, Dr. Swinfen, Mr. Simpson, Mr. Levett, Captain
Garrick, father of the great ornament of the British stage; but
above all, Mr. Gilbert Walmsley, Register of the Prerogative Court of
Lichfield, whose character, long after his decease, Dr. Johnson has,
in his Life of Edmund Smith, thus drawn in the glowing colours of
gratitude:
'Of Gilbert Walmsley, thus presented to my mind, let me indulge myself
in the remembrance. I knew him very early; he was one of the first
friends that literature procured me, and I hope that, at least, my
gratitude made me worthy of his notice.
'He was of an advanced age, and I was only not a boy, yet he never
received my notions with contempt. He was a whig, with all the virulence
and malevolence of his party; yet difference of opinion did not keep us
apart.
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