book for twenty times perhaps, the very act of reading it being more than half the business, and every period being at every reading better understood; while a mind more active or more skilful to comprehend its meaning is made sincerely 1 sick at the second perusal; so a soul like his, acute to discern the truth, vigorous to embrace, and powerful to retain it, soon sees enough of the world's dull prospect, which at first, like that of the sea, pleases by its extent, but soon, like that too, fatigues from its uniformity; a calm and a storm being the only variations that the nature of either will admit. Of Mr. Johnson's erudition the world has been the judge, and we who produce each a score of his sayings, as proofs of that wit which in him was inexhaustible, resemble travellers who having visited Delhi or Golconda, bring home each a handful of Oriental pearl to evince the riches of the Great Mogul. May the Public condescend to accept my ill-strung selection with patience at least, remembering only that they are relics of him who was great on all occasions, and, like a cube in architecture, you beheld him on each side, and his size still appeared undiminished. As his purse was ever open to almsgiving, so was his heart tender to those who wanted relief, and his soul susceptible of gratitude, and of every kind impression; yet though he had refined his sensibility, he had not endangered his quiet, by encouraging in himself a solicitude about trifles, which he treated with the contempt they deserve. It was well enough known before these sheets were published, that Mr. Johnson had a roughness in his manner which subdued the saucy, and terrified the meek 3: this was, when I knew him, the prominent part of a character which few durst venture to approach so nearly; and which was for that reason in many respects grossly and frequently mistaken; and it was perhaps peculiar to him, that the lofty consciousness of his own ' I know no other instance of this strange use of sincerely. Ante, p. 204. 3' He was always indulgent to the young, he never attacked the unassuming, nor meant to terrify the diffident.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 343. superiority, superiority, which animated his looks, and raised his voice in conversation', cast likewise an impenetrable veil over him when he said nothing. His talk therefore had commonly the complexion of arrogance, his silence of superciliousness. He was however seldom inclined to be silent when any moral or literary question was started and it was on such occasions, that, like the sage in Rasselas, he spoke, and attention watched his lips; he reasoned, and conviction closed his periods 3: if poetry was talked of, his quotations were the readiest; and had he not been eminent for more solid and brilliant qualities, mankind would have united to extol his extraordinary memory. His manner of repeating deserves to be described, though at the same time it defeats all power of description; but whoever once heard him repeat an ode of Horace, would be long before they could endure to hear it repeated by another 5. His equity in giving the character of living acquaintance' ought not undoubtedly to be omitted in his own, whence partiality and prejudice were totally excluded, and truth alone. presided in his tongue: a steadiness of conduct the more to be commended, as no man had stronger likings or aversions. His I Miss Hawkins (Memoirs, i. 79), says that 'Mrs. Piozzi [Mrs. Thrale, she should have said], when living much with Johnson, had his tones, which sat very ill on her little French person.' 2 6 'Having taken the liberty, this evening, to remark to Dr. Johnson, that he very often sat quite silent for a long time, even when in company with only a single friend, which I myself had sometimes sadly experienced, he smiled and said, "It is true, Sir. Tom Tyers described me the best. He once said to me, 'Sir, you are like a ghost: you never speak till you are spoken to.'"' Life, v. 73. See also ib. iii. 307, and ante, p. 290. 3 Rasselas, chap. xvii. This passage is quoted in the Life, iv. 346. 'Opposite a passage [in the Anec dotes] descriptive of Johnson's con- 4 Life, i. 39; iii. 318, n. 1. 5 His recitation was grand and affecting, and, as Sir Joshua Reynolds has observed to me, had no more tone than it should have.' Ib. v. 115. 'His manner of reciting verses was wonderfully impressive.' Murphy's Johnson, p. 145. See post in Anecdotes of W. Cooke. The person with whom we are acquainted. In this sense the plural is in some authours acquaintance, in others acquaintances.' Johnson's Dictionary. veracity veracity was indeed, from the most trivial to the most solemn occasions, strict, even to severity; he scorned to embellish a story with fictitious circumstances, which (he used to say) took off from its real value. 'A story (says Johnson) should be a specimen of life and manners; but if the surrounding circumstances are false, as it is no more a representation of reality, it is no longer worthy our attention '.' For the rest-That beneficence which during his life increased the comforts of so many, may after his death be perhaps ungratefully forgotten; but that piety which dictated the serious papers in the Rambler, will be for ever remembered; for ever, I think, revered. That ample repository of religious truth, moral wisdom, and accurate criticism, breathes indeed the genuine emanations of its great Author's mind, expressed too in a style so natural to him, and so much like his common mode of conversing, that I was myself but little astonished when he told me, that he had scarcely read over one of those inimitable essays before they went to the press 3. I will add one or two peculiarities more, before I lay down my pen. Though at an immeasurable distance from content in 'Johnson said, "The value of every story depends on its being true. A story is a picture either of an individual or of human nature in general; if it be false, it is a picture of nothing. For instance : suppose a man should tell that Johnson, before setting out for Italy, as he had to cross the Alps, sat down to make himself wings. This many people would believe; but it would be a picture of nothing. * used to think a story, a story, till I shewed him that truth was essential to it.' Life, ii. 433. See ante, p. 225. * 2 'I could not help remarking how very like Dr. Johnson is to his writing, and how much the same thing it was to hear or to read him; but that nobody could tell that without coming to Streatham, for his language was generally imagined to be laboured and studied, instead of the mere common flow of his thoughts. "Very true," said Mrs. Thrale, "he writes and talks with the same ease, and in the same manner." Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 120. 3'He told us, "almost all his Ramblers were written just as they were wanted for the press; that he sent a certain portion of the copy of an essay, and wrote the remainder, while the former part of it was printing. When it was wanted, and he had fairly sat down to it, he was sure it would be done."' Life, iii. 42. He carefully revised them for the collected edition. Ib. i. 203, n. 6. the the contemplation of his own uncouth form and figure, he did not like another man much the less for being a coxcomb '. I mentioned two friends who were particularly fond of looking at themselves in a glass-' They do not surprise me at all by so doing (said Johnson): they see, reflected in that glass, men who have risen from almost the lowest situations in life; one to enormous riches, the other to every thing this world can giverank, fame, and fortune. They see likewise, men who have merited their advancement by the exertion and improvement of those talents which God had given them; and I see not why they should avoid the mirror ?? The other singularity I promised to record, is this: That though a man of obscure birth himself, his partiality to people of family was visible on every occasion; his zeal for subordination warm even to bigotry3; his hatred to innovation*, and reverence 'Johnson said foppery was never cured; it was the bad stamina of the mind, which like those of the body were never rectified, once a coxcomb, and always a coxcomb.' Life, ii. 128. 2 The first of these men, Mrs. Piozzi says, was John Cator, one of her husband's executors, and the second Alexander Wedderburne, Lord Loughborough and Earl of Rosslyn. Hayward's Piozzi, i. 296. Cator, likely enough, was the man mentioned in the following passage:'Mrs. Thrale mentioned a gentleman who had acquired a fortune of four thousand a year in trade, but was absolutely miserable, because he could not talk in company ; SO miserable, that he was impelled to lament his situation in the street to ****** [? Seward], whom he hates, and who he knows despises him. "I am a most unhappy man (said he). I am invited to conversations. I go to conversations; but, alas! I have no conversation." JOHNSON. "Man commonly cannot be suc cessful in different ways. This gentleman has spent, in getting four thousand pounds a year, the time in which he might have learnt to talk; and now he cannot talk." Mr. Perkins made a shrewd and droll remark: "If he had got his four thousand a year as a mountebank, he might have learnt to talk at the same time that he was getting his fortune." Life, iv. 83. For a specimen of his talk see Letters, ii. 217, n. 1. Of Wedderburne's rise Boswell says:-'When I look back on this noble person at Edinburgh, in situations so unworthy of his brilliant powers, and behold LORD LOUGHBOROUGH at London, the change seems almost like one of the metamorphoses in vid! Life, i. 387. 3 I heard Dr. Johnson once say, "I have great merit in being zealous for subordination and the honours of birth; for I can hardly tell who was my grandfather."' Ib. ii. 261. He said to Sir William Scott, "The age is running mad after innovation; all the business of the world for for the old feudal times', apparent, whenever any possible manner of shewing them occurred. I have spoken of his piety, his charity, and his truth, the enlargement of his heart, and the delicacy of his sentiments; and when I search for shadow to my portrait, none can I find but what was formed by pride, differently modified as different occasions shewed it; yet never was pride so purified as Johnson's, at once from meanness and from vanity. The mind of this man was indeed expanded beyond the common limits of human nature, and stored with such variety of knowledge, that I used to think it resembled a royal pleasureground, where every plant, of every name and nation, flourished in the full perfection of their powers, and where, though lofty woods and falling cataracts first caught the eye, and fixed the earliest attention of beholders, yet neither the trim parterre nor the pleasing shrubbery, nor even the antiquated ever-greens, were denied a place in some fit corner of the happy valley. is to be done in a new way; men are to be hanged in a new way; Tyburn itself is not safe from the fury of innovation." Life, iv. 188. I Johnson, had he read this, might have reproached Mrs. Piozzi, as he reproached the Earl of Chatham, with 'feudal gabble.' 1b. ii. 134, n. 'I said,' writes Boswell, I believed mankind were happier in the ancient feudal state of subordination, than they are in the modern state of independency. JOHNSON. "To be sure, the Chief was: but we must think of the number of individuals. That they were less happy, seems plain; for that state from which all escape as soon as they can, and to which none return after they have left it, must be less happy; and this is the case with the state of dependance on a chief or great man."' Ib. v. 106. See also ib. ii. 177; iii. 3 |